Devil's Arcade
by Zubeneschamali
Summary: While still dealing with the aftermath of the wishing well, Sam and Dean are taken by a group of hunters who will stop at nothing to find out the truth about Sam's abilities and how Dean managed to come back from the dead.
1. Chapter 1: Somebody Paid

Title: Devil's Arcade  
Author: Zubeneschamali  
Rating: T (violence, language)  
Summary: While still dealing with the aftermath of the wishing well, Sam and Dean are taken by a group of hunters who will stop at nothing to find out the truth about Sam's abilities and how Dean managed to come back from the dead.

Spoilers: Takes place after 4.08, "Wishful Thinking," with spoilers up to and including 4.10, "Heaven and Hell."

Disclaimer: Dude, if they were mine, the back seat of the Impala would have been put to use much earlier than the tenth episode of the fourth season. Sheesh.

A/N: This is the product of my successful 2008 NaNoWriMo attempt (which gives you an idea of how long this is...). Despite the eps that aired as I was writing it, I think it's still in canon if the reader cuts me some slack. The title is from Bruce Springsteen's beautiful song of the same name, and a soundtrack is provided throughout the story. Many thanks to DreamBrother for beta reading.

oooooooooooooooo

You said heroes are needed, so heroes get made  
Somebody made a bet, somebody paid  
--Bruce Springsteen, "Devil's Arcade"

oooooooooooooooo

Sam knew they never should have done the hunt.

It was three days after Concrete, Washington. Three days after Sam was left with a second memory of suffering a violent death, of overwhelming pain shutting down his body and sending him into darkness. Three days after Dean admitted that years' worth of the tortures of Hell were burned into his brain and that he was bound and determined to keep it to himself.

Three days of cursing to himself that Dean had informed him of this _after_ Sam melted the coin down, once it was too late to create his own private wishing well and erase the memories from his brother's mind.

Oh, the hunt itself hadn't been the problem. A two-paragraph story from the AP wire had sent them a day's drive away to a simple case on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains where an old miner was trying to regain his possessions from their current owner—even though said miner had died many years ago. The problem was the distance that Dean's deliberately-spoken words had put between them, on top of Sam's rant weeks earlier about having something in his blood that his brother couldn't possibly understand. The two together led to lingering, awkward silences interspersed with arguments that flared out of nowhere and vanished into sideways glances and smoldering resentments that neither was used to carrying for more than a few hours at a time.

Still, they'd played their respective roles the same as ever: Dean had taken the brunt of the spirit's anger while Sam carried out the familiar ritual with a few unique twists, including freaking out at a critical moment. Of course, he would much rather forget that had ever happened, but at least there was no (or maybe not much) harm done in the end. A few shakes of the salt canister and a flare of a match later, and they were on their way back to the Elk River Motel.

That was where the problem was waiting for them.

Or maybe the problem had been in the inquiries they had made at the library in the county seat on the previous day, or maybe at the local diner where for once Sam was the one eliciting information from the friendly waitress. Perhaps it was at the mountain town's tiny grocery store where their only purchases were a ginormous canister of salt and a huge box of matchbooks, both of which they had somehow managed to run out of at the same time. They never found out how the word got out who they were and that they were in Elk River, Idaho, or how their luck could have been so awful that the people who were looking for them happened to be within driving distance at the time.

What they did know is that when they arrived back at the motel—damp in clothing and tired in body and spirit, both of them regretting the words they'd spoken a few hours ago and thinking about the gap between them that was cracking open a little wider every day—their reflexes were not what they should have been.

Which was why the three men waiting in their room had embarrassingly little difficulty overpowering them.

Dean had entered first, tossing the motel room key on the bed and turning towards the bathroom door. He'd barely laid a hand on the door when it suddenly swung inward. Before he could react, he stumbled forward into a fist already headed his way.

Sam instantly started to turn towards him, which meant that the hands that grabbed him from behind could do so without him seeing them coming. His body knew what to do better than his conscious brain did, his arms flying up from his side to break the hold while his right leg punched backwards in a kneecapping move. Unfortunately, his automatic response was thrown off by a day filled with mountain-hiking and boulder-climbing and brother-saving, and so he missed completely. A second pair of hands took advantage by grabbing his extended ankle and twisting, sending him thumping to the floor on his back.

He automatically put his arms down to push himself up and then stopped abruptly. The .45 caliber handgun pointed straight between his eyes was inducement enough to stay still.

Sam's eyes flickered up to the man holding the gun, who he suddenly realized was not the same one who had initially grabbed him. That was a guy who had to be as tall as Sam himself, but with narrower shoulders and a meaner look on his young face. The man with the gun was older, maybe forty, with a few days' stubble and a John Deere baseball cap. Though he was sure he'd never seen them before, the way they carried themselves was somehow familiar.

A second later, he realized what was so familiar. They moved the same way he and Dean and Bobby did, the same total awareness of their surroundings without the rigidity that a military background brought.

They were hunters.

"Lie down where you are, hands underneath your head," said the older one with the trace of a southern accent.

Lowering himself back down, Sam docilely lifted his arms and placed his hands under his head. The guy in the ball cap was in range of a quick kick, and if Sam could time it with a reach behind him for the gun he still had in the back of his waistband…

Then he noticed the younger man had also drawn a gun and aimed it at him. His jaw clenched as he realized there was no way he could do anything with two weapons on him. Damn it, why had they stashed all of the weapons back in the trunk before coming in? Not that a crossbow would be much use at such close quarters, but at least the shotgun might have been worth something.

The scuffling sounds behind him drew to a sudden halt, and Sam twisted around to see Dean being shoved out of the bathroom at gunpoint, blood trickling down one cheek and staining his knuckles. His eyes instantly went to Sam and then to the two gunmen, coming back to Sam with a clear question in his gaze.

Sam gave him a short nod to say that he was okay while asking the same with slightly lifted eyebrows and a more intense look.

The corner of Dean's mouth twitched up as if to say, _Don't worry about me_. His eyes again shifted around the room and back, and Sam caught the message. Whoever these men were, they obviously thought Sam was a bigger threat since there were two guys on him. That meant Dean would be the one keeping his eyes open for his chance to start something.

The guy behind Dean was also older than the brothers, his close-cropped auburn hair flecked with white, and he looked like he was more than comfortable with the Beretta in his hand. With his other hand, he was tucking Dean's gun into the back of his worn jeans. "All set?" he asked.

"Yep," came the response from the older man standing over Sam.

"Man, if I'd known this was such a high-crime area, I'd have picked another motel," Dean said, reaching up to wipe the blood off his cheek with the sleeve of his sweatshirt. "Hope you aren't looking to score more than a couple of bucks, 'cause that's about all we're good for."

"We think you're good for a lot more than that, Dean Winchester," said the man with the Beretta.

Sam's eyes shot to his brother, who looked as confused as he felt. "Do I know you?" Dean asked, eyebrows raising as he carefully turned to face the man, keeping his hands up in front of him. "I swear, I was only flirting with her. Didn't mean a thing by it."

Standing at Sam's feet, John Deere snorted. "Turn over," he demanded, prodding Sam's leg with his boot.

Sam looked up at him warily. Slowly, he rolled over onto his stomach, keeping his hands clasped at the back of his head. He lifted his head slightly so he could keep an eye on Dean, standing a few feet to his left, and the red-haired man holding a gun on him. He heard the creak of leather as someone stepped over his legs and crouched down next to him. A moment later, at the small of his back, he felt his own gun being removed.

Then he stiffened in shock as the muzzle of the weapon pressed against his neck.

"Hey!" Dean barked, fear coloring his voice as he took a step forward.

In his peripheral vision, Sam could see his brother being yanked away by one arm to the far side of the room. His own senses suddenly ramped up as the adrenaline started to surge, enhancing the stale smell of the motel carpet filling his nostrils, the brown-and-orange pattern that was a little too close for his eyes to focus on, and the hard press of metal that was warm from his own body heat biting into the back of his neck.

"What do you want?" he asked, surprised at how calm his voice was. In all of the dangers they encountered in their job, guns were not something they were used to being at the wrong end of. Sam's confidence level wasn't exactly high at the moment, given his helpless position. On the bright side, these appeared to be people and not supernaturals. People could be reasoned with.

Theoretically, at least.

The man kneeling over him said, "Put your hands behind your back. Slowly."

Sam grimaced. He didn't exactly relish the thought of having his hands bound, which was surely where this was headed. On the other hand, the pressure at his neck reminded him that there were worse alternatives, and so he carefully obeyed.

Sure enough, a few seconds later he felt rope biting into his wrists. He kept his muscles clenched so there would be some give in the rope when they were done, but there were enough layers of rope that slipping free was going to be more than a little difficult.

Once Sam's hands were secured, the younger guy got up and strode over to where Dean was, grabbing his shoulder and spinning him around and into the wall. Dean offered no resistance as his own hands were tied, no doubt because of the gun that was still resting against Sam's neck. Once the tall man was done, Dean was flipped around again and the red-haired man holding him said, "Let's go."

Sam watched helplessly as Dean was marched outside, giving Sam a look that was equal parts confident and frantic as he passed. Once Dean and his captor were out the door, Sam felt the gun move away from his neck, and he briefly closed his eyes in relief. "Up," came a command from above him, followed by a kick to the ribs. Whoever these guys were, they sure weren't much for talking.

Sam rose to his knees and staggered to his feet. John Deere gestured with the two guns in his hands, and Sam moved out in front of him and into the night.

They stopped at the far edge of the parking lot where a dark pickup truck sat beneath a broken streetlight. Dean and the red-haired man were standing next to it, and a rough hand on Sam's upper arm kept him from getting too close. He looked around, assessing the situation, quickly noting where everyone stood and where their weapons were. When he looked at Dean, he could read clearly on his face that his brother had already done the same thing and had come to the same conclusion: _I got nothing_.

Behind him, Sam felt the left sleeve of his sweatshirt being tugged upwards, and he looked over his shoulder to try and see what was going on. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Dean straining to do the same, but the older man standing next to him kept a firm grip on his shoulder and a gun pressed into his side.

Then a flash of silver in the moonlight caught Sam's eye, and he had just enough time to brace himself before sharp pain sliced across his forearm. He choked back a cry, throwing his head upward and squeezing his eyes shut.

"What the hell are you doing?" Dean called sharply. His cry was quickly followed by scuffling sounds from the same direction.

Opening his eyes, Sam quickly looked over to see Dean struggling against his captor despite the gun that was pressing against his ribs. "Dean, cool it!" he called back, worried that even the presence of a firearm against his side wouldn't be enough to hold him in place. "It's okay." _Just a little blood running down my arm, no big deal. Not nearly as much as you lost because of me earlier today._

Once Dean saw he was alright, he stopped fighting, although his eyes still held a menacing promise as he glared at the man holding him. Then from behind Sam, the youngest man of the group came forward, holding up a six-inch silver blade stained with blood. He held it up forebodingly and stepped towards Dean.

"Careful with that thing," the red-haired man called out, backing up a step. "You never know people might be carrying, even if they don't react to silver."

Sam looked quickly at Dean, but his wide eyes were riveted on the blade. The younger man adjusted the angle he was holding the knife so that the drops of Sam's blood on it were running right down onto the ground.

Then he advanced again on Dean.

"Get away from him!" Sam barked, lunging forward before John Deere grabbed his arm and stuck a gun in his back. He came to a halt, eyes widening as the knife came closer to his brother.

For his part, Dean was trying and being prevented from taking a step away as the tall guy circled around from behind, but his voice was almost calm as he said, "Hey Sam, you think if I got a piece of silver embedded in the back of my hand or something, it would stop people from sticking knives in me?" Then he froze and hissed in a breath as Sam saw the younger man's arm move in a slashing motion behind him.

After a second, Dean shook his head, jaw clenched. "Are you happy now? We've established that everyone here is human, or at least that the two of us are, so do you mind telling us what the _hell_ is going on?"

"I wouldn't be too sure about that," John Deere said from behind Sam.

Sam tensed and looked at his brother, who had the carefully blank expression he used when he was trying to hide something big. "What are you talking about?" Sam asked.

"Like you don't know." The tall man came forward, holding the knife carefully so that none of the blood was dripping onto his fingers. Sam tried to take a step back, but there was nowhere for him to go. The man came forward and with a sneer, wiped the blade clean on Sam's shirt, leaving streaks of his and Dean's blood mixed together across the green sweatshirt he wore. "Don't worry, you can tell us all about it later. Demon boy."

Sam knew that panic had flared across his face before he could school his features, and he knew the other man had seen it, too. But he still said with a set jaw, "I don't know what you mean."

"Not here." The command came from the man holding Dean at gunpoint. "Let's get them in the truck and get out of here." He gave Dean a shove towards the pickup. "Get in and lie down on your stomach."

Sam watched as Dean clambered over the tailgate and into the bed of the pickup as best he could without his hands to help him. Once he was in place, the gunman climbed up after him and knelt down, holding the weapon against Dean's back. "Get his legs," he said to the younger man, who came over and used another length of rope to tie Dean's ankles together.

A breeze whispered past, and Sam shivered. They had only been wearing sweatshirts over their t-shirts, figuring that the exertion of a long hike followed by a salt-and-burn would keep them warm. Then an unexpected thunderstorm had caused them a whole host of problems, not the least of which was momentarily drenching them in icy rain before the exertion of the return hike dried them off. And now it was approaching midnight, and the mountain nights were cold. If they were going to be sitting out in the open bed of a pickup truck with damp clothing, they were going to get even colder.

On the other hand, it would take one man to drive the truck, which meant one guard for each of the brothers in the back. Those odds were a little better than their current situation, even if they were tied hand and foot. Sam had a small knife tucked in his back pocket, and he was pretty sure Dean was carrying a blade in his boot. They could make short work of the ropes if given half a chance. Then, even as tired as they were, fighting against armed humans would probably be easier than what they faced on a regular basis.

Then he noticed the material piled next to Dean, and what the youngest of their captors was preparing to do with it, and he froze. "No!" he called out, his throat suddenly dry as his escape plans evaporated into the chilly night air.

The older man in the pickup bed looked up. "Don't worry, you'll get your turn," he smirked. "C'mon, Harry, let's wrap him up."

It was too dark to see the expression on Dean's face, but Sam figured he was doing his best to hide panic. Dean had never been fond of enclosed spaces, and Sam could only imagine how much worse it had gotten after waking up in a coffin underground. And now, his body was being rolled over until it was resting on the plastic tarp piled next to him and then slowly wrapped up in the tarp.

A memory suddenly flashed across Sam's eyes, clear as day, of a bitter argument he'd had with Bobby a few days after Dean's death. Once the older man had conceded to Sam's wish of keeping Dean's body intact, he wanted to wrap it in a sheet as a sign of respect, covering up the tattered remains of what the hellhounds had left behind. Sam had fought vehemently against it, arguing that when Dean came back, he was going to have enough trouble getting his way out of the coffin without being wrapped in a shroud. Bobby had told him he was crazy for worrying about that, Sam had snapped back that maybe he was, and the two of them had nearly come to blows before Bobby backed down, more out of concern for Sam's mental state more than anything else.

Now, watching Dean disappear under layers of plastic, Sam couldn't help but think of putting his brother's poor, torn body in a plain wooden box, meticulously noting the location of every wound and every scratch as he did so as a reminder of how he had failed to save him. He remembered closing the lid of the coffin and how long it had taken before he could force himself to tap the nails into the lid, how only the fear of wild animals somehow digging up the remains had enabled him to secure the lid at all.

Suddenly bile rose up in his throat and he staggered forward, hurling the remains of their energy-bar-and-trail-mix dinner all over the dusty gravel of the parking lot.

"Ugh! God, that's disgusting!" the youngest man exclaimed, looking back over his shoulder from his position in the truck and making a face.

As Sam finished retching, he dimly heard his name being called. When he realized it was Dean, muffled by the tarpaulin wrapped around him, he straightened up and weakly called back, "I'm okay, Dean."

"So am I, Sam," came the deliberately reassuring response. Then, a little more hopefully, Dean went on, "Hey, you didn't manage to puke on them, did you?"

He let out a soft snort and closed his eyes, drawing on the strength his brother was lending him. "No, I didn't."

"Dude, try harder next time," came the response.

"Shut up," the red-haired man said, giving Dean a hard thump with his fist through the tarp.

When his turn came, Sam fought only perfunctorily as they forced him into the back of the truck and bound his ankles before immobilizing him in a second piece of plastic. _At least it'll keep us warmer_, he thought as the world disappeared behind the green tarpaulin. He fought back a wave of vertigo as they rolled him around a few times, trapping him securely with no way of getting to his knife. _Damn, they could all ride in the cab of the truck now and it wouldn't make a bit of difference to us._

In fact, that was what happened. From the conversation he could make out through the plastic wrapped around him, no one wanted to be stuck in the back of the pickup in near-freezing temperatures with two guys who weren't going anywhere. In a moment, he felt three bumps as each of the men left the bed of the truck, then three more as they climbed into the cab.

Then the engine started up, and they drove off into the cold night.

oooooooooooooooo

OK, first multi-chapter fic in this fandom, so any encouragement to go on would be greatly appreciated…


	2. Chapter 2: Damn Good Start

Well, I guess the number of author alerts and reviews is a good indication that there are people reading this! Thanks to the anonymous reviews and the alerters (alerteds? alertees?) whom I can't reply to personally. *waves at annie* Don't worry, it _is_ written in its entirety except for a bit of the last chapter, so this is only technically a WIP.

ooooooooooooooooooo

I took a guess and cut a portion out of my heart  
He said that's nowhere close enough but it's a damn good start  
--Five for Fighting, "Devil In The Wishing Well"

ooooooooooooooooooo

**Three days earlier**

Stunned into immobility, Sam stared after his brother as he walked away down the weathered grey boards of the dock. He finally started following slowly, automatically, but it wasn't until the distant bow-legged figure flung open the door of the Impala and climbed inside that Sam roused himself enough to catch up, afraid that Dean might well drive off and leave him there in small-town Washington.

But when he slipped into the passenger seat, Dean was simply sitting there, staring out the windshield. The teddy-bear girl and her sunburned parents were passing in front of the car, a big smile on her face and shell-shocked expressions on theirs. Sam frowned.

How could they still be sunburned when things had been returned to the way they were for everyone else?

The ironically-named Hope who'd been enchanted into loving Wesley-the-nerd couldn't remember that she even knew the man she'd been married to. Sam wasn't crispy from the lightning bolt that had hurled him out of his shoes, nor were there any scorch marks in the sidewalk or on his clothes. Wesley had given him the nutshell description of what had happened after the jolt of electricity that he _did_ vividly remember: the blinding white light that had become his world for a fraction of a second before sheer nothingness had closed in.

No, maybe not quite nothingness. There was something tickling the back of his memory about what had come next, that split second when he had wondered if this was what Uriel had meant by turning him to dust…

Sam slammed down his mental walls before that thought could go any farther. Given the bleak look on Dean's face when explaining that yes, he did remember every horrible detail of what had happened after his own death, Sam probably didn't want to recall exactly what had happened to him yesterday. He'd been dead once before, and he kept that under mental wraps as much as he could, too.

"So, where to?" he asked in his best _let's change the subject_ tone.

"Beats me," Dean said, still staring ahead. "Away from this freaky-ass town, that's all I know."

"It'll be fine now, Dean. The coin's gone." _More's the pity_, Sam thought, thinking of their conversation on the dock a moment ago. Because he had a damn fine use for it now.

"Yeah, I guess it is." Dean let out a gusty sigh and turned on the car. "Check the paper, see if there's anything interesting. Otherwise I guess we'll head east."

Sam obediently fished the newspaper out of the back seat where Dean had tossed it and started leafing through the pages as they drove out of Concrete. There were lots of local oddities being reported, which was hardly surprising given that months' worth of memories and events had been rearranged in people's minds overnight. He felt the prickle of electricity across his back and stiffened. _Not only in their minds_, he reminded himself. _Apparently in their bodies, too._

He suddenly wondered if he was the only person who had been the victim of a fatal wish. The answers to the children's wishes had made it pretty clear that "be careful what you wish for" had taken on a whole new meaning with the enchanted coin. If anyone else besides Hope had wished that someone would simply disappear or stop interfering, would they have died, too? Were they back, too, or was he lucky in that he hadn't been dead long enough for his body to cool?

_Not like last time_, a voice whispered in his head, and a swift shudder passed through him at the memory of dying in the mud at Cold Oak.

"Found something?" Dean asked with a sideways glance.

"Not yet," Sam automatically replied, turning the page and willing the memory away.

"Hey, you never told me what happened with the nerd and his love-slave wife. What happened when he took the coin out of the well?"

Sam scanned the page, hoping for a nice, distracting article so he could head off this topic before it got somewhere he didn't want to go. "I guess she didn't remember any of it."

"Huh." Dean punched the accelerator, blowing through the last yellow light in town and putting Concrete in the rearview mirror. "You didn't see it happen?"

_No, I was kind of dead at the time_. "No, I wasn't in the restaurant when he did it." He turned to the last page of the single-section newspaper, aware that his luck with the conversation was about to run out if he didn't find something else to bring up.

No frickin' way was he telling Dean what the final wish cast in the well had been.

"Too bad. Would have liked to see the look on his face when he realized the 'love of his life' wouldn't give him the time of day." Dean took his fingers off the wheel long enough to make air quotes.

"Yeah, that would have been hilarious," Sam muttered.

He felt rather than saw the look Dean shot him. "Dude, what crawled up your butt?"

Sam pressed his lips together, his features forming into what Dean loved to call his bitchface. "Nothing," he said as he scanned the final column. _Please let there be something worth looking into, something far away in Georgia or Maine…_

There it was. Thank God for "News of the Weird."

"Hey, check this out," he said, folding the newspaper back on itself so only the lower right-hand corner of the last column of the last page was visible. "Out of Elk River, Idaho. 'Sources say a recent spate of thefts has an obvious suspect, but local authorities are having a hard time taking them seriously. Rose Henderson, proprietor of Elk River Antiques, has had several items stolen from her shop over the past month. When questioned by the county sheriff, she gave a description that matched perfectly to a former, well-known resident of the area.'"

"Yeah, and?" Dean asked impatiently, making a rolling motion with his hand.

"This well-known resident died twenty years ago," Sam added, quirking his eyebrow upwards.

"Oh." There was silence for a moment while Dean navigated a hairpin turn as the road started to climb up into the Cascades. "So how do we get to this place?"

Sam frowned. "Are you sure this is a good idea?" He'd been hoping for several days' worth of driving before they encountered another supernatural: either enough days to give him another crack at getting Dean to talk, or enough time so that the current level of tension between them would be reduced. Besides, for his part, apparently he was going to need a little time to shake off the aftereffects of another more-than-near-death experience. Diving headlong into another hunt was potentially dangerous given the shaky ground both of them were on right now.

On the other hand, diving headlong into denial was always how Winchesters dealt with things, so why should this be any different?

"Why wouldn't it be a good idea? Hey, the chick in the article recognized the ghost, right? Can't get much easier than that." Dean scrunched up his nose. "Too bad 'Rose' sounds like a little old lady's name, especially if she's running an antique store, but you never know. Could be some lonely young woman stranded up in the mountains, waiting for a handsome young fellow to show her a good time." He waggled his eyebrows.

Sam pursed his lips as he tried to think of the best way to say what he wanted to without making Dean defensive about himself or concerned about his little brother. "I thought maybe we should take a break for a few days. Hang out somewhere, shoot some pool, get our cash flow in better shape."

"Dude, our cash flow is fine. 'Sides, we're coming into a national park and following it up with some pretty damn empty country. Not a lot of pool halls out here." The Impala's tires thrummed against the pavement for a moment, and then Dean said, "What's up with you, Sam?"

"Nothing," he answered too quickly, folding the newspaper back the way it had been and tossing it over his shoulder. The movement stretched muscles that were sore from hitting the ground, and he winced.

Then he froze. His body was back to normal, right? If the wishes had been unmade, then he was never struck by lightning and never got blasted out of his shoes and never fell dead to the concrete. Then why was he sore from the impact?

"I'll figure out a route," he said to distract himself and his brother, digging under the seat for the well-worn road atlas.

No, there was no way in hell he was telling Dean that a wish from the enchanted well had killed him, if only for a few minutes. Dean would freak out and treat him like he was made out of glass and turn the car around to go back and kill Hope (no pun intended, Sam thought with a bit of grim humor). He didn't need to know.

If Dean could keep his secrets, then so could Sam.

ooooooo

As it turned out, Elk River was as close to a straight shot from Concrete as you could get in this part of the world. Nevertheless, the sharp peaks of the Cascades, the rolling hills of the Palouse, and the rising foothills of the Rockies all conspired to make them spend as much time driving north or south as east over the course of the day. Dean momentarily pouted when he realized the Grand Coulee Dam was too far off their route to justify a stop. Normally, Sam would have either relented and planned the hundred-mile diversion or teased Dean for pouting, but today he couldn't muster up the energy to do either.

It was a shame, because the terrain they were driving through was as beautiful as any Sam had ever seen, and he'd seen pretty much the whole damn country. They always talked about how someday they'd come back to a place like the Cascades and take a hike in the woods that didn't involve chasing something with claws or fangs, or spend some time looking at a beautiful landscape through something other than the windshield. For the first few years after resuming hunting, in fact, Sam had kept a mental list of the places he was going to go back to once it was all over: Lost Creek National Forest in Colorado, Lake Manitoc in Wisconsin, maybe even New Paltz, New York.

But the instant the yellow-eyed demon told him what was lurking under his own skin and what it was intended for, any thoughts of "once it was all over" had vanished without a trace. Now Sam was glad that there was always another hunt, always something else driving them on, always a reason not to think about what "all over" meant for him.

They motored eastward, rolling into the tiny Idaho town at dusk. It was picturesque enough to make your teeth hurt: the road was perched along the side of a winding valley with a crystal-clear mountain stream below and forested hills above that widened out briefly into a gentle, grassy slope cradling the cluster of buildings that constituted Elk River, population 156.

Sam noted the antique shop as they passed—it was hard to miss, considering there were about eight buildings on the main road. Thankfully, the last of those buildings was a reasonably well-kept motel, although Dean grumbled about parking his baby in a dusty gravel parking lot.

Once they were settled in a room at the end of the building that was at least neat and clean—despite being last decorated before they were born—Sam muttered something about going to get dinner and slipped back out. Dean nodded absently after him, already ensconced on his bed and flipping through channels. Sam shut the door behind him and strolled out into the parking lot.

There wasn't much of a choice about where to go: the motel clerk said the Elk River Café might still be open, but that would be it. So Sam trudged the whole four blocks across town to the worn white building that shone in the moonlight as if it had been recently painted, an encouraging neon red "Open" sign glowing in the window.

A bell bounced cheerily off the glass door as he entered, and the two lone patrons in the café looked up. Sam gave them a half-smile, and they returned friendly nods before resuming their conversation. They looked like hunters—not the Winchester kind, but the deer kind. _Brilliant observation_, he could hear Dean saying, given the neon orange vests draped over their camouflage jackets. He shook his head and slid into the cracked vinyl booth at the end, noting the purple-and-white gingham curtains over the window that matched the seats.

Actually, now that he noticed it, pretty much everything in the restaurant was purple or white. It was a deep purple, not pansy-assed lavender like Dean would probably insist on calling it once he saw it, but it was still unusual. He picked up the menu and found it printed in the same monotone color scheme. Just as he found himself wondering if the owner was a fan of Prince or the Minnesota Vikings, he flipped the menu over to see "Huckleberry Heaven" printed at the top. Well, every town had its excuse for a festival to celebrate its identity, he supposed; this was no weirder than garlic or gladiolas, only two of the many they'd come across over the years.

"What can I get you, hon? We're closing soon, so best make it quick."

Sam looked up to see a middle-aged, motherly-looking blonde waiting at the edge of the table, notepad in hand. He blinked. Man, he must be tired if she had managed to sneak up on him. "Um, what's with the huckleberries?" his tired mind chose to spit out through his lips.

She grinned. "This your first time in Elk River?" she asked.

"Yeah, it is. That obvious, huh?" he asked with his trademark sheepish grin.

The smile grew wider, and he decided she must have children to have developed that particular look of patient tolerance. "This'll explain it," she said, tapping the plastic-covered menu in his hands. "In the meantime, how about a cup of coffee and a muffin while you decide?"

"Let me guess what kind of muffin, Marie," he said with a raised eyebrow, noting the name on her nametag.

"Smart aleck," she said, turning away, but in a friendly tone. Sam felt a grin spread over his own face. Flirting with the waitress was usually Dean's department, but since he wasn't here…

His face fell. It was true that ever since mid-September, whenever Dean wasn't right at his side, he'd found himself thinking about what the older man would do or say, the thought bringing him comfort like it hadn't been able to in the previous months. He hadn't exactly taken over Dean's habits and mannerisms when he thought—no, when his brother actually _was_ dead. In fact, he'd tried to forget as much as he could about what Dean would have said or done in response to anything that crossed his path.

That's how the drinking had started: trying to drown out the Dean-voice in his head that insisted on making snarky comments about nearly everything he came across, from checking out women walking down the street to suggesting the best way to approach a hunt. Or, and most especially, chiding Sam for not picking himself up and moving on—as if a pep talk was all it should take.

Sam set his jaw and forced himself to concentrate on the menu. Dean was back, he was sitting right over there in the motel room waiting for Sam to bring him some food, and there was no use dwelling on those horrible four months that had in many ways been much worse than the six months he'd spent playing the Trickster's game.

At least then he hadn't done anything he couldn't tell Dean about.

When the waitress returned, Sam quickly ordered two specials to go. He was so tired he had to call Marie back to add on two slices of the house pie. Ever since Sam's abduction, Dean had never again asked him to bring back pie, but Sam tried to always remember. Especially when a peace offering was necessary, which given the silence that had filled the Impala for most of the day, was definitely the case right now.

He spent the time waiting looking around the room, counting how many ways the décor had managed to work in the fruit that was apparently the symbol of the little Idaho town. Out of curiosity, he checked the syrup dispensers waiting in their little purple basket at the back side of the table. One maple, one huckleberry. Dean was going to love having breakfast here.

Sam shook his head tiredly. _Can't stop doing it, can you?_ he asked himself.

"So you're here with someone?" Marie was back with the coffee pot, and Sam was surprised to realize he had already drained his mug. "Kind of late in the year for most tourists."

"Yeah, my brother." Sam realized belatedly that the two of them hadn't yet come up with a story for their presence in town, which gave him free rein as long as he remembered to tell Dean who they were. Years of experience in small towns had taught him that the closer to the truth they could get while remaining as vague as possible, the better. "We, uh, heard about the problems that the antique store in town is having with things going missing."

Marie finished pouring and set the coffee pot on the table and a hand on her hip. "You guys private investigators or something?" She dubiously eyed him up and down, no doubt taking in the worn red-and-white plaid flannel shirt hanging open over the Wall Drug t-shirt Dean had bought for him the last time they'd headed east from Bobby's place.

"Something like that," Sam agreed, keeping his expression neutral and holding his breath.

Marie cast a glance over her shoulder at the kitchen before sliding into the booth opposite him. Sam held back the mental _Yes!_ at the implied forthcoming information dump. "Poor Rose has been going through an awful lot," she started in a low voice, fixing him with a warning look. "That reporter who came through here ended up treating her like a kook."

Sam folded his hands on the table in front of him and did his best to project trustworthiness. Dean might still give him a hard time for his floppy hair, but he was sure it did more to make him look harmless than anything else hanging off his six-foot-four frame. He licked his lips and took a leap based on the way Marie had phrased her response. "Ma'am, it's been our experience that stories like Rose's don't get the seriousness they deserve because people are afraid to believe they're true. We have no intention of adding to whatever she's going through right now by treating her like there's something wrong with her." _Never mind that I read about her in "News of the Weird,"_ he mentally added.

"Why are you here investigating?" she asked, a sharp tone to her voice that hinted of protectiveness towards the antique store owner.

He spread his hands wide, palms down. "We just want to help," he said quietly but earnestly. "It's what we do for a living."

The woman's chocolate-brown eyes focused on his for a moment, and she took her lower lip in between her teeth. Then she nodded as if her mind was made up. "We're closing in fifteen minutes, but you'll be back for breakfast, right?" she asked with raised eyebrows.

"Yes, ma'am," Sam instantly agreed with a nod of his head. "Gotta try those huckleberry pancakes."

The corners of her eyes crinkled as she smiled in a way that reminded him of Dean. "That you do," she said, scooting back out of the booth. A bell rang in the kitchen, and she looked over her shoulder as she picked up the coffee pot. "Sounds like your order's ready," she said, turning on her heel.

Sam took another sip of the coffee and pushed it aside; it had obviously been sitting on the burner way too long, and the need for caffeine wasn't overriding the complaints of his taste buds the way it so often did. He tucked a couple of dollars between the salt and pepper shakers, half surprised the white crystals hadn't been dyed purple, and rose to make his way to the cash register.

It was a younger woman who rang him up, her resemblance so strong to the blonde waitress that he knew his earlier guess about her family status has been correct. The girl couldn't have been more than fifteen, but she rang up the order and accepted Sam's cash as efficiently as if she had been doing this for years. "Have a nice night," she said cheerfully as she handed over the plastic bag laden with styrofoam containers, and he gave her a warm smile in return.

Outside, Sam breathed in the cool, pine-scented air and felt his shoulders relax as he strode down the dark streets towards the motel. Overhead, the stars were twinkling in profusion, the few streetlights of the town doing little to dim the majesty of the vast expanse above. He could faintly hear the rushing of the river down below the town, streaming on to the Snake, then the Columbia, and then the Pacific. For a moment, he found himself picturing the map and exactly where the water flow, and then he shook his head with a self-deprecating grin. _Turn off your brain, dude_, Dean would say if he could hear him. _Either that or plug it into the car and save us some gas._

His spirits had lifted considerably from the walk over to the café. Already he could tell that this was not going to be one of those suspicious little towns where no one wanted to talk and he and Dean had to fight tooth and nail for any kind of information. Maybe it came from being a minor tourist destination, where residents regularly dealt with outsiders instead of being so far off the beaten trail that they saw anything unknown as a threat. Maybe it was good luck for a change.

Whatever the reason, things were looking up. Marie would give them more information in the morning, they'd talk to Rose, and then they'd deal with the spirit and be on their way. His earlier misgivings about taking on another job so soon after the wishing well disaster were already dwindling.

This hunt could be just what they needed.

ooooooooooooooooooo

I know, we gotta have a case in here, but all those in favor of getting back to the boys tied up in the truck, raise your hands and click on "Review"…


	3. Chapter 3: Through the Darkness

Thanks again for the reviews; I really appreciate them. For most of its length, this story will be alternating chapters between the present and a few days past, and also between Sam's and Dean's points of view. Hopefully that means there's something for everybody. :)

oooooooooooooo

Can't see nothin' in front of me  
Can't see nothin' coming up behind  
I make my way through the darkness  
I can't feel nothin' but this chain that binds me  
--Bruce Springsteen, "The Rising"

oooooooooooooo

Dean knew they never should have done the hunt.

The weirdness that was Concrete, Washington (and what the hell kind of a name for a town was that, anyway?) had messed with both of their heads, leading Dean to blurt out some things he'd been planning on keeping to himself for a long, long time to come. Like maybe forever.

Now, bound hand and foot in the back of a moving truck, he was regretting that he couldn't keep his big mouth shut. He hated himself for putting that stricken expression on Sam's face when he had admitted that yeah, he remembered every frickin' detail about his time in the pit, and no, he wasn't going to share a minute of it. There was no goddamn way he was ever going to tell his brother about the things that had been done to him, and worse yet, the things he had done.

To some extent, the kid had asked for it, badgering him about sharing and opening up and all that crap that he knew Dean was never down for. Well, never down for unless he'd been infected with a fear virus that gotten him to spew out all sorts of garbage about how dumb their lives were and how much it sucked to be trapped with each other all day long and what a sucky life this was. None of which was even true.

Okay, maybe the last part was true; he'd wanted to turn around in the driver's seat and punch in that big nerd's face when he'd whined about how easy Sam and Dean had it just because they happened to be good-looking. What a moron. Talk about not having a clue. It had almost made him want to describe Year Twenty-Nine in gruesome detail just to blow the idiot's mind. If Sam hadn't been sitting there, he might well have done it.

And now if he hadn't blown it, hadn't shoved the truth in Sam's face and stalked off, there wouldn't be this awkwardness between them that sapped their energy and put them off their game. Dean was firmly convinced of that. How else could the two of them have been overpowered so easily by a couple of yahoos? They never should have taken this hunt, should have taken a couple of extra days to regroup and stop feeling sorry for themselves and each other. He'd almost thought about suggesting it, but Sam had seemed so eager to move on that he wasn't going to stand in his way.

Life certainly was pretty sucky right now. Still, he was lucky they'd given him enough room to breathe, with his hands and feet tied and all of him wrapped up in a muddy old tarp that was doing its best to get him to freak out from claustrophobia. He'd been on the verge of doing so when they were wrapping him up until Sam's cry and subsequent puking sounds had jerked him back to reality. Someone had to keep their cool around here, and it looked like it was going to have to be him.

The pickup jolted forward, and he winced as his head thumped against the bed of the truck. "Sam, you there?" he shouted out.

A muffled response came immediately. "Yeah." There was another thump as they jolted their way from the gravel parking lot onto the main road. "Ow."

Dean rolled his eyes at the darkness around him. Somehow he got the feeling there was going to be a lot more of that to come.

The truck started moving faster, and he pitched his voice louder to carry over the engine. "You got any idea who these guys are?"

"Not a clue," came the response, then something he couldn't quite make out. "You?"

"Not really." The truck turned a corner, and he took advantage of the motion to roll onto his side, facing the direction his brother was speaking from. "Must be hunters, though."

"Ya think?" came the sarcastic response. "Was it the silver knife or the tattoos…gave it away?"

Dean blinked. He hadn't even noticed a tattoo. Score one for Sammy. He'd been too focused on the gun nestled against the back of his brother's head to pay attention to much of anything else. "Did you recognize them?"

"The tats? Yeah." Sam's voice was getting harder to hear. "They're a variation…we've got."

"Huh," he replied, trying to remember how rare their tattoo artist had told them these particular markings were. He'd never asked Castiel how he had managed to keep his tattoo intact while removing every other permanent marking from his skin. All he knew was that he was grateful for it. "What about the men? You know them?"

"Never seen them." There was silence for a moment, broken by identical groans as the truck hit a pothole. "What do you think…from us?"

_That's the million dollar question, isn't it? _"You'd know better than me," he called back.

There was a pause. Then, louder, "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

He let out another sigh. "Nothing. You're the one who's been above ground for the last six months, that's all."

"Oh." They rolled on for a few seconds. Then Sam asked, more hesitantly, "So d'you think it's about you or me?"

Dean couldn't help the snort that escaped him. Yeah, it figured. They were sniping at each other like they hadn't done since Sam was a teenager, and now as far as the rest of the world was concerned, they were both worthy of being treated like supernatural freaks. "I don't know, Sam," he replied. "Could be both."

"Yeah," came the response.

Beneath them, he could feel the truck starting to climb uphill. The little town they'd been staying in was at the junction of a mountain stream and a larger river, so it was two-to-one odds they'd be gaining elevation as they drove away. The road was still paved, although apparently not very well-maintained, as the occasional bump made clear. Dean figured they'd been going for about half an hour from the motel so far. He tried to remember the map of the area but frowned in frustration. That was more Sam's department than his.

"Got any idea where we are?" he called out.

There was a short pause. Then Sam's exasperated response came. "In case you didn't …can't exactly see…going."

"Didn't those vampires blindfold you and you still figured out where you were?" _C'mon, Sam, use your head_.

"Not at the time, Dean!" There was another pause. "'Sides, having…trouble here."

"What is it?" Dean quickly asked, alarm rising.

"Kinda hard…breathe."

_Shit_. Dean had initially worried about that himself, but when he'd realized that he was having no difficulty, he'd figured his brother's broader shoulders would have forced a wider opening around his head. If he craned his head backwards, he could see out the top of the rolled-up tarp. It got him only a sliver of a view of the cab window and a crick in his neck, but he could feel more of the cold night air on his face.

"Can you tilt your head back?" he shouted.

There was a rustling sound, followed by an "Ow!" and a few words he didn't often hear from his little brother's mouth as they bumped off the paved road and onto gravel. Then, "Yeah, that helps."

With the gravel crunching under the tires, they weren't going to be able to have much of a conversation anyway, so Dean called out, "Save your breath."

And then he was left alone with nothing but his thoughts, which wasn't exactly where he wanted to be at the moment. Sealed up in this plastic with his limbs immobilized was a little too much like—

No, he was _not_ going to think about that. Just because he had more years' worth of memories of Hell than of Earth rattling around in his head didn't mean he had to think about them. Ever. Again.

So instead Dean concentrated on the jarring ride, the way that his skull bounced softly against the bed of the truck, the way the ropes were chafing his wrists, the way his left arm was falling asleep from his body's weight on it. All annoyances, to be sure, but they were only that. Not fire and brimstone, not hooks digging into flesh and impossible chasms yawning beneath him. Just the simple discomforts of having a human body in the real world where it was only humans who intended to do him harm.

Dean sighed and dropped his head back. How many people could say that they were _reassured_ by the fact they were tied up in the back of a pickup truck being driven around by armed men? Damn, but his life was screwed up.

He figured it was another half hour of lurching along on the gravel before the truck finally came to a stop. "Sam," he called out before the engine died.

"Ready," came the quick response.

The engine turned off, and he figured they only had a few seconds before the cab doors opened and their captors were on them. "You get a chance, you run. Got it?"

"Same goes for you," Sam replied.

_Whatever,_ Dean thought to himself, but out loud he said, "Okay."

The pickup bed dipped underneath them as one man, and then two, climbed up. A moment later, a foot connected with Dean's ribs, forcing a whoosh of breath out of him. A matching grunt from the other side of the truck told him Sam was being treated the same way.

"Get 'em out of there," he heard the third man say from his post outside the truck.

Dean's world suddenly lurched as he felt his shoulders being picked up, and then another pair of hands grabbed his feet. He wanted desperately to reach out and grab a hold of something, but his arms were bound behind him, and the feeling of utter helplessness at being swung through the air was sickening.

On the other hand, if it was taking two of them to manhandle him out of the pickup bed, he couldn't wait to see what it took to bring Sammy out.

He was lowered off the side of the truck and had a brief, panicked moment of free-fall before hitting the ground with a thud. The air was knocked out of his lungs, and he gasped like a fish for a moment, afraid he wasn't going to be able to breathe with the plastic over his face.

Then the world started to spin madly around him as he bounced around, cursing all the while. They must have grabbed one end of the tarp to spin him loose. Dean emerged onto the hard-packed dirt dizzy and bruised, unable to take advantage of the fact that his legs were being cut free because of the rate at which his head was spinning.

As they jerked him upright, the world was still rotating enough to make him completely unsteady on his feet. _Damn, but that was effective_, he thought grudgingly, opening his eyes and trying to get a bearing on what was going on.

His head cleared abruptly at the feel of a sawed-off shotgun pressing against the skin underneath his right ear.

"Don't move," came the growled command from behind him, and he was inclined to obey.

Up in the pickup, the tall, lanky guy and the man who'd gotten the jump on Sam were unwrapping the bundle that held his little brother. Dean held his breath, seeing only one more layer of plastic to go. If Sam could keep those two guys occupied, he had a chance at ducking away from his captor and disarming him with a properly placed kick, as long as he could keep his balance through the lingering vertigo. Was Sam going to come out swinging?

Sure enough, before the last bit of the tarp was removed, he saw Sam swiftly draw his legs up and then lash outwards, catching the tall guy off-guard, who stumbled backwards, arms windmilling, and had to jump to the ground to keep from falling there in a heap.

"Atta boy, Sammy," Dean muttered. Sam was already twisting upwards to fend off a blow from the second man, using his shoulder to knock him down. At the same time, he was scissoring his legs back and forth, and the rope around his ankles was visibly loosening.

Taking advantage of the moment, Dean dropped into a crouch, ready to spin around and lash out with his legs. _Pretty dumbass move to cut me loose_, he thought, and he was going to take advantage of it.

Unfortunately, the gunman behind him hadn't been as distracted as he'd thought. The kick that caught Dean in the ribs came by surprise, laying him flat on his back with a foot on his chest before he could push himself back up. He was suddenly staring up the barrel of the sawed-off, and the man holding it looked like he was more than ready to use it.

Dean thumped his head back against the ground. _First chance blown_, he berated himself, hoping there would, in fact, be a second chance for them to escape.

"Hold it right there," the man above him called out in Sam's direction. "You wanna keep your brother alive, you'll stop it right now."

All motion stopped in the pickup. Dean saw Sam's head rise to look at them, and then his eyes grew big at the sight of the shotgun on Dean. His mouth grew tight, but he stopped where he was, long legs braced wide apart for balance, the coil of rope still around one ankle.

"You little…" the man in the pickup snarled as he rose to his feet, picking up his John Deere cap from where it had fallen and placing it on his head. Then he reached out and gave Sam a strong shove.

"Hey!" Dean called out angrily, but Sam was already tilting backwards. With his hands tied behind him, there was no way he could use them to maintain his balance, and he went crashing over the side of the pickup and onto the hard ground below.

Dean lunged upwards, but the foot on his chest kept him firmly in place. "Let go, you son of a bitch!" he grunted, straining to see Sam.

The tall guy—Harry, that's what they'd called him—strode around the side of the truck and bent down. A moment later, Sam was dragged to his feet, shaking his head as if to clear it. He instantly looked over at Dean, who could see his brother favoring his left shoulder. No surprise, after landing hard on it for the second time that day. "You okay, Sam?" he called out.

"Peachy," came the strained reply.

Dean let out a huff and tried to sound offended rather than relieved. "Dude, that's my line."

"Shut it," muttered the red-haired man standing over him. He pressed down slightly with his foot, making Dean's breathing a little more difficult. "Get him inside," he called out to the others. Then in a tone of warning, "Anything doesn't go smoothly, and this one gets a chestful of lead."

"Sam, you give 'em hell!" Dean forced out. He wasn't surprised when the pressure on his chest briefly disappeared before a boot caught him in the ribs again. He curled up slightly, but didn't make a sound other than a sharp exhalation. No way was he giving these bastards the satisfaction of reacting to them.

After all, he had decades of experience keeping his pain and his screams to himself.

He watched Sam being frog-marched into an old, weathered barn that the pickup had pulled up in front of. The nearly full moon was high, showing him the extent of the small clearing that they were in. There was the barn, a rusting tractor outside, and nothing but evergreens all around the dirt driveway. Whatever field the tractor had been used to plant was either well away from this clearing or had long since been overgrown by trees.

Also, it was frickin' _freezing_ out here.

When they finally dragged him inside, the first thing he saw was Sam tied to a plain wooden chair in the middle of the concrete floor of the barn, ankles bound to the legs of the chair and multiple strands of thick rope securing his torso to the back, hands still trapped behind him. He already had a black eye forming and a split lower lip, aside from whatever injuries he'd sustained when falling out of the truck, and Dean felt his blood boil. Sam's lips were pressed together, his breathing coming hard through flared nostrils, his eyes signaling to Dean that he was okay but pissed.

Behind him, the John Deere dude was eyeing Dean closely, the muzzle of what he recognized as his brother's gun resting almost casually against Sam's neck.

It was that last thing that kept Dean from offering any resistance as they shoved him into a matching rickety chair a few yards away from his brother and immobilized him the same way. He wasn't sure if he should be offended or grateful that they only wrapped the rope twice around his chest, half of what Sam had been subjected to. Not that it probably mattered, given how tight they were pulling it, but it was further proof that he wasn't the one they were afraid of.

Surprisingly enough, given the decrepit state of the place, the electricity seemed to work: there were a couple of utility lights shining from overhead, hooked onto an orange extension cord that drooped down from the rafters. Still, it wasn't a whole lot warmer in the barn than it had been outside. Looking at his brother, Dean could see a shiver pass over him. They weren't exactly dressed for sub-freezing temperatures. "Hey, you got a space heater in here?" he called out. "This place is like a friggin' icebox."

John Deere looked over and said meaningfully, "That's right, you're used to a somewhat _warmer_ climate than this, aren't ya?"

Dean froze. Then his eyes shifted to Sam, whose mouth tightened further. Okay, at least now they knew what they were here for. Or at least, these hunters appeared to know where Dean had spent his summer vacation.

He let out a sigh. Maybe if he carried around a bottle of holy water and took regular swigs from it, other people wouldn't feel obliged to go to such lengths to verify that he was who he said he was. Or maybe he could get a certificate from Castiel that verified he was one-hundred-percent human, swear to God, no pun intended.

"So who are you?" Sam asked, his voice surprisingly confident considering a man was holding a gun to his head. "And what makes you think you can go around kidnapping other hunters?"

"They did say you were the smart one," John Deere replied. "For what it's worth, I'm Tom Abramson. That over there is my son Harry." He gestured with his free hand at the lanky young man who was currently closing the barn doors, shutting out the frigid night air.

Dean looked up at the guy in front of him, the one who'd been standing on his chest outside, and smirked. "I guess that makes you the Dick, huh?"

The red-haired man regarded him for a moment, expressionless. Then he stepped forward and threw all of his weight into a punch straight into Dean's midriff.

Dean involuntarily bent over despite the rope around his chest, which put his jaw right in line for the uppercut that followed. He winced as his head snapped back, his abs still aching from the first blow. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Sam stiffen in his chair, but there wasn't like there was much he could do from his position. Besides, whatever attention Dean could draw to himself was that much less that his brother would have to deal with.

So Dean straightened his head, cracked his neck to one side and then the other, and said, "Come on, is that all you got? I've been hit harder by an eight-year-old." _An eight-year-old who made a wish that he was Superman, but still._

Red was winding up for another blow when Tom spoke up. "Let it go, Joe. He's just trying to rile you up."

Joe's clenched fist wavered for a moment, then dropped to his side. He took a couple of steps back as if to remove himself from temptation, which Dean definitely appreciated. "Don't worry," he said in a deep bass voice out of tune with his less-than-six-foot height. "There'll be more where that came from."

Dean looked up with a sneer, blood trickling from his lip. "Believe me, there's nothing you can dish out that I can't take. Nothing."

He heard a small huff from Sam's direction and looked over to see the traces of a knowing but grim smirk on his face. Apparently his brother understood that Dean had found the one and only silver lining to having been subjected to the tortures of Hell: humans couldn't do anything that he hadn't already withstood and more.

"So tell us what's going on," Sam said. "Tell us what we're doing here."

"Nope." Tom finally stepped back from Sam, lowering his gun, and Dean breathed out a quiet sigh of relief. "You're the ones who are gonna talk. Both of you. You're gonna tell us how a man who was clawed apart by hellhounds can be sitting right here in front of us, alive and in the flesh."

"Divine intervention?" Dean suggested with raised eyebrows. Sam shot him a sharp look of warning, but he shrugged it off. This was the one time the truth was going to get them absolutely nowhere.

Tom snorted as he walked around to stand in front of them. "Not likely. Considering that we know it's the opposite kind of intervention that was involved." His calculating gaze fell on Sam, and Dean felt a cold tendril of fear wind up his spine. "The question is," he went on, his face that of a judge and executioner all in one, "how exactly did you use your demon powers to get your brother out of Hell?"

Dean's stomach dropped. He looked at Sam, who was already staring back at him, eyes wide and tight-lipped expression saying the same thing that Dean felt on his own face.

_We are so screwed._

oooooooooooooo

And already we can see that those of you who are in favor of the Winchesters being tied up are going to like this story. ;) Please review!


	4. Chapter 4: Leave It To Memory

Thanks for the reviews, everyone. And now, back to the case we go...

oooooooooooooo

I will try not to worry you  
I have seen things that you will never see  
Leave it to memory me  
I shudder to breathe  
--R.E.M., "Try Not to Breathe"

oooooooooooooo

**Two days earlier**

He saw a razor-sharp blade and bright red blood spilling out onto a cold white surface, flesh bled dry but healing before his eyes to be torn over and over again. There were hands stretched out in front of him, coated in dried blood so that it was hard to tell where the knife ended and the fingers began, the nails encrusted in the same shade of dark red as the rusting blade.

But he couldn't tell if the hands holding the knife were his or Alastair's.

Dean sat up sharply and looked around the room, his heart pounding. He saw orange-and-brown carpet that clashed with the pink floral bedspreads, shabby brown curtains that let in as much of the morning light as they kept out, and Sam's laptop open on top of an oak desk with decades' worth of dings and scratches. He saw his duffel bag shoved against the wall, clothes spilling out from last night's search for a clean pair of boxers, and he saw Sam's bag zipped and sitting at the foot of his bed. Off to his left, behind the closed bathroom door, the shower was running.

He let out a long breath.

His stomach rumbled, and he absently gave it a rub. The tiny wicker garbage can next to the desk was overflowing with the packaging from last night's dinner, which he'd barely tasted even as he'd eaten it. It was rare that his brother enjoyed food with more gusto than he did, but after spending much of yesterday trying not to think about what he was _not_ going to tell Sam about Hell, he hadn't had much of an appetite. Even the pie had been hard to choke down, which was a rarity indeed.

The shower shut off with a clatter from the pipes, and Dean threw off the covers. Sam hadn't been able to shut up last night about the restaurant in town and how much Dean was going to love it. He'd also mentioned something about cooperative locals, which actually had caught Dean's interest more than the promise of blueberry—no, huckleberry pancakes.

Which was a sure sign that something was wrong with him.

"Hey, you're up." Sam's voice drifted over from the bathroom doorway. "How'd you sleep?"

He pasted on a deliberately fake grin. "Like a baby."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Maybe a colicky baby," he muttered as he ducked back into the bathroom.

Dean made a face after him, the juvenile response momentarily distracting him from nightmares and memories. "Hey, forgot to tell you last night, I got our IDs picked out."

"Yeah?" Sam finished drying off his hair and shucked the towel back into the bathroom. "Nothing government, right?"

"Geez, Sam, you think I don't pay attention when you tell me things?" Dean dug into the back pocket of his jeans, hanging over the room's only chair, and held out the card he'd selected from their wide array of fake identities last night while waiting for Sam to return with dinner. As it turned out, it fit right in with the beans Sam had already spilled at the local diner.

Sam accepted the flimsy piece of plastic and squinted at it. "Paranormal Research Institute of California?" he read, his voice rising with incredulousness.

"Yeah, well, Rose already thinks it's a ghost, right?" Dean replied defensively. "Unless you said something to the contrary to the waitress."

Sam let out a soft snort as he pulled on his jeans. "No, that's a perfectly reasonable cover. It's the acronym, dude."

"Oh, that." Dean smirked. "What, you don't think we're a couple of pricks?"

"Speak for yourself," Sam muttered, tucking the fake ID away into his front pocket.

Dean opened his mouth to say something about Sam's conclusion that he'd been infected by an angry ghost because he was a dick, not a prick, but he thought better of it and shut his mouth. Given the way things were between them lately, he didn't need to pick a fight with his brother—something would come up sooner or later to set them on edge anyway.

Breakfast was, in fact, as good as Dean hoped, between pancakes plump with berries and the sweet, sticky syrup he coated them with. Their waitress's resemblance to Mary Winchester had thrown him for a moment, especially combined with her daughter's similarity to the 1970s version. But Sam had carried the conversation, gaining them a little more information about the thefts from the antique store.

It was old mining equipment that had gone missing, stuff over a hundred years old that had long since been replaced by more advanced machinery. Not that there was much mining up here anyway, Marie told them: silver and gold had run their course pretty quickly in this part of the Rockies, and Elk River had been a timber town from its founding in the early 1900s. Still, some people liked to do a little hobby mining from time to time, or to try and lure tourists in with the promise of quick riches.

"That's what Rose thought it was at first," Marie confided. "Some tourist who'd been suckered and wanted to steal something as payback. But then she says she saw him, clear as day."

"Saw who?" Sam had asked, mopping up the last of the syrup with his final piece of pancake.

Her brown eyes twinkled as she put the check down on the table. "You should ask her yourself," she said. "I'm sure she'll be expecting you."

Ten minutes later, they were knocking on the door of Elk River Antiques, collared shirts buttoned up but ties and jackets back at the motel. When the door swung open a crack, revealing an elderly woman who definitely looked more like Sam's type than his, Dean let his brother step forward. "Mrs. Henderson? We're here about the trouble you've been having with your shop." Sam held out his ID card, and Dean held his breath.

She reached out a steady hand, took the card, and squinted at it. "Paranormal, eh?"

"That's right," Sam replied in a friendly tone. "We came across your story and wanted to know if we could help."

She eyed them both over the top of her wire-framed glasses. Then she swung the door open. "Come in, then."

Sam accepted his ID back and shoved it into his front pants pocket. Dean followed him in, instantly feeling claustrophobic at the sheer amount of _stuff_ crammed into the store. He stood closer to Sam than usual, not wanting to disturb any of the knick-knacks and crap that covered every available surface. He would be surprised if they got out of here without a gawky Sasquatch arm or leg breaking something worth hundreds of dollars.

"Now, Mrs. Henderson, I understand that you can positively identify the man you saw in your shop?" Sam asked. Dean winced at the officious tone of his voice. _Remember your ID, dude…_

Her piercing blue eyes sharpened on him. "Are you sure you're not with the police, young man?"

Sam blinked and straightened up. "Yes, I'm sure. Why do you ask?"

"Because you sound just like one of them. Oh, not Sheriff Bunce, I've known him since he was a pup," she said, waving a hand. "But if you'll excuse me for saying so, you don't sound like a paranormal researcher. You sound more like a TV cop."

"He, uh, he used to be a cop." Dean upped the wattage of his smile as she turned her attention to him for the first time. "Saw one too many unexplainable things to stay with the force, if you know what I mean. But it's hard to break him of old habits." He jabbed an elbow into Sam's ribs, still smiling.

"I see." She pursed her lips. "How about you?"

"What about me?" Dean asked, momentarily puzzled.

"Too many unexplainable things happen to you too?" she asked, arching a white eyebrow.

"Oh no, ma'am." He shook his head as inspiration struck. "Actually, the institute was founded by my father, and I kind of took it over. Family business, I suppose you could call it." He could _feel_ the look Sam was giving him but ignored it.

"I see." She looked back and forth between them. "You're not reporters?"

Sam hurriedly said, "No, Mrs. Henderson, I promise, we are not reporters trying to get a story. I can assure you of that." The kid was practically radiating earnestness, Dean thought, his puppy-dog eyes wide open and his hair flopping down over his eyebrows.

Whatever Sam's trick was, it must have worked, for the elderly woman gave a sharp nod of hr head as if she had come to a decision and turned her back on them. "Call me Rose. We'll talk upstairs," she said as she flipped around the sign on the front door so it would read "Closed" from outside.

"We don't want to disrupt your business," Sam said quickly.

She cocked her head to the side, reminding Dean of a sparrow. "There isn't much business to disrupt," she said frankly. "Too late in the season for hikers and too early for skiers, and the hunters aren't much for antiquing."

Dean cleared his throat. "I suppose not," he agreed. He couldn't imagine why anybody would be much for antiquing, not if it consisted of looking at row after row of dusty glass bottles and furniture that was better suited for firewood than sitting on, as far as he could tell.

She gave him a shrewd smile as if she could read his thoughts, then strode back past the two of them and towards the back of the shop. Dean looked over at Sam, who gave a quick jerk of his head as if to say, _We'd better follow her_.

They trailed after the older woman through a cramped back room, up a narrow staircase and into a bright, sunlit kitchen. As they'd guessed from the outside, she apparently lived over the store. She motioned them into high-backed wooden chairs at a small table, all of it the same age and old-fashioned style as the items downstairs. "Now, you look more like coffee than tea drinkers. Am I right?" she asked.

The corner of Sam's mouth lifted up. "Yes ma'am, but we're fine."

_Speak for yourself_, Dean thought. With nightmares like the one he'd woken up to, even a good six hours of sleep left him feeling exhausted these days.

"Marie's good at refilling those cups, isn't she?" When she saw the quick look the brothers exchanged, she let out a chortle as she started to fill the coffee pot. "This is a small town, you know. We might not be texting to each other all the time like the kids in the cities, but word still travels fast when strangers are doing more than passing through."

Dean paused to adjust his mental picture of an elderly antique store owner who was familiar with text messaging. When he was done, he said, "I understand you've had a little trouble being taken seriously about what you saw." Two could play at this game of sharing insider information.

She turned on the coffee pot and turned to face him. "Figured that one out all by yourself, did you?"

To his right, Sam made a little choking noise, but Dean ignored it. "We run into that a lot in our line of work."

"I'll bet you do," she said, lowering herself into the chair opposite him. "So this research your institute does: is it basic or applied?"

"Definitely applied," Sam said earnestly.

"I see." Rose folded her wrinkled hands in front of her and took a deep breath. When she spoke again, her voice sounded less sure of herself. "You're not going to hurt him, are you?"

Dean exchanged a wild look with Sam. "Who?" they both asked at once.

"Michael. He doesn't mean any harm by it, but it really has to stop. It's difficult enough that he takes his things from my shop, but I can't risk that he'll try to take something back from a customer. That's why I went to the police, you see."

Dean felt his mouth gaping open and hastily closed it. He felt better when he saw the same expression on Sam's face. "So…you know this spirit?" God, it was always weird to be able to talk about a case with a witness this freely.

"Well, of course I do. He was my brother." She reached across and patted his hand with her liver-spotted one before rising from her seat. "Do you boys take cream or sugar?"

It was a good thing there weren't any flies in the kitchen, given how the Winchesters' mouths again dropped open. "Um, cream," Sam managed to stammer out.

He raised an eyebrow at Dean, who widened his eyes and slightly drew his head back in response. That was returned by a pointed glare, but Dean held his ground with a slight sideways tilt of his head. Sam let out a sigh and said, "Mrs. Henderson, did you mention that he was your brother in your police report?"

"Well, not officially, I suppose, but Sheriff Bunce would know who Michael Etchebarry was, wouldn't he?" Rose lined up three white china cups along the scarred yellow Formica countertop and carefully poured coffee in each of them. "I tell you, it was quite a shock to see him in the store, standing there plain as day when he's been gone these twenty years, but it was him."

Sam cleared his throat. "Mrs. Henderson, why would your brother be trying to steal from you?"

"Do you have a brother, young man?" she asked, turning towards him.

Dean watched in amusement as Sam visibly did _not_ look at him. "As a matter of fact, I do," he said.

"Mm-hmm." She carried over two of the china cups and placed them carefully in front of each of the Winchesters. "Did you ever play tricks on each other?"

A sound escaped from Dean's throat before he could help it, followed swiftly by a large foot connecting with his shin under the table. "Sometimes," Sam blandly replied.

"Then you understand," she said with a nod as she set down a tiny ceramic cream pitcher next to her coffee cup before sinking back into her chair. "I thought that's what it was. But he didn't respond to me when I called to him, and that was strange. Michael would always do whatever I asked, always."

"I know what you mean," Sam said softly, eyes dropping to the table, and Dean felt his heart clench for a moment.

He cleared his throat and reluctantly asked, "Do you, uh, know where he's buried?"

She looked away. "I'm afraid I don't." There was a pause, and then she went on, "I lived away from Elk River for many years. He died while I was gone, and since our parents had both passed, the community took care of him." She drew in a long breath and added more quietly, "I eventually came back, but I never could bear to ask where he was buried."

The brothers exchanged glances again. "Can you tell us how he died?" Sam asked softly. "It might help to explain why he's here now."

She bit her lip. "He was struck by lightning."

Dean was surprised at the way Sam's face suddenly and completely blanched. His Adam's apple moved in a huge swallow, and he hastily reached down and took a giant swig of his coffee. Dean shot a quizzical look his way, but Sam was refusing to meet his eyes. Shrugging it off, Dean gave her the standard line. "We're sorry for your loss."

Her faded blue eyes slowly dragged up to his. "Thank you," she said stiffly. "I've never quite gotten over it, as you can see. I can't help but feel that it's my fault."

"I thought you weren't living here at the time," Dean said, puzzled.

"No, but I didn't leave him with the protection he should have had." She nodded towards the sink, and Dean noticed for the first time a row of light brown rocks on the shelf above it.

"Are those fossils?" Sam asked. Dean restrained himself from rolling his eyes. What a geek his brother was.

"Yes, they are. That's a good eye you have, young man." She rose and took the two steps necessary to get to the sink and reached up and picked one of the stones from the shelf. Returning to the table, she placed it carefully in Sam's now-outstretched hand.

Dean watched as his brother turned the rock over, pausing to focus on the outline of what looked like an evergreen sprig etched into one side. "What is this?" he asked, raising his eyes to their hostess. "Is it cedar?"

"Actually, it's a _jangoikoaren harriak_," Rose replied.

Dean raised an eyebrow as he tilted his head forward. "Come again?"

Her wrinkled face dissolved into a smile. "Stones of God," she replied, waving an arm at the tan-colored rocks lining the windowsill. "My ancestors believed they weren't the remains of plants or animals, but thunderbolts that had fallen from the sky. And that keeping them in the kitchen would provide protection from lightning."

"So does a lightning rod," Dean muttered.

"That's if you're concerned with electrical discharge," she replied, eyeing him closely. "But if you're trying to keep out evil spirits, these are what you need."

Dean shot a look at Sam, whose long fingers had stilled around the cedar fossil. "Sorry, but they don't seem to be doing their job," Dean replied slowly.

"Oh no, they're working just fine. I haven't seen him up here, have I?" she asked. "Besides, he's not evil, he's just confused." She reached out and patted Sam's hand. "Why don't you hold onto this one, dear. He might not act as kindly towards strangers as he has to me." She rose again and took another, smaller fossil from the shelf and handed it to Dean.

"I thought they had to be kept in the kitchen," Dean said, turning the object over in his hand and noticing the fine detail of the leaves captured in the rock.

"Then consider it a souvenir," Rose replied. "Or payment in advance."

"Oh no, there's no payment necessary," Sam hastily said. This time it was Dean who delivered a kick to the shins, forcing Sam to press his lips together rather than deliver a yelp.

Rose's eyes flickered back and forth between the two of them. "Just be careful with Michael, will you? I'm sure he doesn't mean any harm."

"We will, ma'am," Dean responded automatically. They rarely bothered telling family members that their departed loved ones weren't as benign as they thought.

It was much easier to smile and nod and then go torch the sucker's bones.

Rose saw them back out through the shop. Once outside, they climbed into the Impala, pulled the car doors shut in tandem and then sat in silence for a moment. Finally, Dean let out an exasperated sigh. "Damn it, why can't people just stay dead?"

Sam's reply was a pointed look. "Mr. Kettle, there's a Mr. Pot on line one," he said, raising his hand to his ear and extending his thumb and little finger to form a mock telephone.

"Aw, crap." Dean made a face and slammed his hand against the steering wheel, voicing a thought that had been lurking in his head for months now. "Yeah, maybe that's true for me, too."

Sam abruptly straightened in his seat. "What are you talking about, Dean? You'd rather be in Hell?" he asked, his voice rising in pitch and volume with every word.

"No, dumbass," Dean said with a withering look. "If Dad had never made the deal. If the car accident had done me in. Maybe we'd all be a lot better off."

Sam let out a huff of breath and folded his arms over his chest. "Yeah, 'cause Dad and I would have gotten along _so_ well hunting without you. And as soon as I got infected with the Croatoan virus, he'd have put me down." He pointed a finger at Dean before he could reply. "Don't tell me that isn't true, 'cause you know it is."

Dean looked at him for a long moment before turning the key in the ignition and letting out a short sigh. "I still wish he'd told me more," he said quietly. "I wish he'd told me freakin' _anything_ besides what he did." Even now, all these years later and with everything else that had happened, they still didn't know the meaning of John Winchester's final, cryptic words.

Only that they still seemed to be extraordinarily relevant.

"You and me both," Sam sighed, fidgeting with the worn cuff of his shirt.

"I mean, I don't even know what all he knew. Or how he found it out." Dean added as he pulled out onto the street, "Or how sure he was that it was true."

"Or who else might know." They exchanged a silent look, both no doubt thinking of Gordon Walker. Sam went on, "He must have heard it from somewhere. Which means someone else must know."

"We've been over this before, Sam. He coulda pieced it together from things, like he did all the time with the journal. No one _told_ him where to find the yellow-eyed demon. No one _told_ him there was anything wrong with you," Dean insisted.

"We don't know that," Sam answered quietly, still picking at the edge of his button-down shirt. He was silent for a moment before saying with a grim smile, "Guess Dad taught us well, huh?"

Dean frowned as they neared the end of their short drive. "What do you mean by that?"

A quick sideways glance told him Sam was biting his lip. "You don't need to protect me, Dean. If that's why you're not telling me what happened to you."

"Shut up," he growled, turning sharply into the motel parking lot. "You don't know what you're talking about."

Sam straightened up in his seat. "Then tell me."

"No." Dean hit the brakes, and Sam jolted forward a little. "How many times do I have to tell you, Sam? It's not happening. So leave it alone!" And he switched the ignition off and flung himself out of the car, slamming the door behind him.

He was glad when Sam didn't immediately follow, glad that he could disappear into the bathroom and pat cold water on his cheeks and pretend he didn't see his own face smiling and splashed with blood when he looked in the mirror.

'Cause deep down, he was afraid that one day—no, scratch that. He knew, goddamnit, he _knew_ that one day he was going to end up spilling his guts to Sam. He hadn't been able to keep Dad's final command a secret for more than a couple of months, despite knowing it would rip Sam's life apart. And he'd spilled the beans about his deal within a matter of hours, thanks to Mr. I-Know-I-Severed-His-Spinal-Cord. There was no reason to believe this time would be any different.

The thing was, once he told Sam what he'd done down under, there was no way the kid would ever look at him the same again.

And Dean simply couldn't face the thought of that.

ooooooooooooooooo

Santa leaves more presents for people who click the review button…Merry Christmas, and posting will resume next week!


	5. Chapter 5: Crashing Back

Thanks to the anonymous reviewers I can't reply to, and to all of the alerts and favorites out there. Hope this is worth a week's wait!

Disclaimer is in the first chapter, and thanks once more to DreamBrother for beta reading.

ooooooooooooooooo

Now the universe left you for a runners' lap  
It feels like home when it comes crashing back  
--R.E.M., "Aftermath"

ooooooooooooooooo

The relief Sam felt when the gun was finally taken away from his head lasted for only a few seconds. As soon as their captor started talking about demon blood, his heart plummeted. How could they have known about that? Sure, rumors traveled fast among hunters, and Sam had been a target for years, but not for anything this specific. Now these guys had put two and two together and come up with a very convincing semblance of four.

And how in the world were he and Dean going to convince them otherwise when it was the truth?

"There's a rumor about you, Sam Winchester. Rumor is, you can exorcise a demon without a holy book or a chant." Tom leaned slightly forward. "Rumor is, you can do it all in your head 'cause you got demon blood in you."

"Rumor is that guys who spend too much time in barns start getting it on with the sheep," Dean shot back from his seat a few yards away.

Tom ignored him. "We talked to a hunter who ran into you in New Mexico a few months back. Saw you chase a possessed man into a cave carrying nothing but this." He held up Sam's Beretta. "Saw black smoke come drifting out an hour later and then you carrying the guy's corpse over your shoulder."

"You don't need a book if you have the exorcism memorized," Sam answered, his heart starting to pound faster.

He remembered that day clearly: it was the first time he'd gone into battle confident that he could pull it off in his own special way. Although it had been tougher than expected, he'd managed to get rid of the demon, if not save the young man's life along the way. He and Ruby had celebrated afterwards, inasmuch as "celebration" consisted of Sam getting drunk off his ass while simultaneously wishing like hell that Dean was there and glad that he hadn't lived to see what his little brother had become.

"That's one time," Tom replied. "There's other stories. Some as recent as last month. Seems you're getting more bold with your demon abilities."

Sam lifted his chin, jaw set in a tight line. "You don't know what you're talking about."

"We'll see." Tom regarded him for a moment before turning towards Dean. "And then there's you."

Dean lifted his eyebrows. "Me? Man, if I had psychic abilities, I'd be getting laid a lot more often."

"You shouldn't be here at all." Tom took a step towards him. "You should be six feet under. Or a lot farther down than that, if the stories are true."

Sam saw something flash across Dean's eyes, a millisecond of the same earth-shattering terror that flickered across his brother's normally fearless features when he thought no one could see, the same something that had led Sam to confront him about his memories of Hell.

To distract him, he spoke up. "You already know he's not a revenant. And he's not a product of a reanimation ritual, either."

"No, I suppose that's true," Tom mused. "And I guess holy water wouldn't do anything more than get you wet." Tapping the gun against his leg, he stood directly before Dean. "Doesn't mean you're not a demon, though."

Dean snorted. "If I was a demon, do you think the three of you would still be standing? Not that you will be anyway, by the time I'm through with you."

"Promises, promises." Tom regarded him for a moment longer before pivoting and coming back to Sam. "So how do you do it, boy?"

Sam blinked. "Do what?"

The older man reached out almost casually and backhanded him. "The exorcism," he said conversationally. "How do you get rid of demons with just your mind?"

Pressing his lips together, Sam ignored the stinging of his cheek. How the hell did these guys know? "I don't know what you're talking about."

Tom brought up his arm and centered the barrel of the gun between Sam's eyes, close enough that he would be cross-eyed if he focused on the end of the muzzle. "You want to try that again?" he asked.

Joe and Harry moved quickly out of the line of fire, and off to his left, he could hear Dean draw in a sharp breath. But Sam couldn't look away from the man in front of him and the deadly threat he represented.

It wasn't just the gun that was inches from Sam's face, it was the intentions of the man who held it. Gordon Walker's fate might have served as a warning for other hunters, but ever since Walker had used Dean as bait and made him think he'd blown up the younger Winchester, Sam had worried that someone else was going to come after them. Rumors spread fast in the hunting world, and although the loss of the Roadhouse had probably slowed things down, it wasn't hard to see how word would get around of a man who could cast out demons with his mind and had a brother who had recently returned from the dead.

Dean's angry words from a month ago flashed through his head: _If I didn't know you, I'd want to hunt you_. Apparently he'd been right about that. They'd both been hunted down here, and he had the bad feeling that no matter what answer he gave to Tom's question, it was going to be the wrong one.

So staring down the barrel of the gun, there was only one thing he could say.

Straightening up as best he could, clenching his bound hands into fists behind him, Sam looked up at his captor and snarled, "No."

The older man's dark brown eyes stared back at him, anger lighting their depths, followed swiftly by resignation. "Fine," he said, lowering the gun and stepping back while nodding at his son. "We'll do this the hard way."

Sam exchanged a quick look with Dean, who looked resigned to more physical threats or even a beating. Neither of them was prepared when Harry stepped forward with a magic marker and started drawing sigils on the ground around Sam's chair.

"Dude, exorcising him isn't going to do anything," Dean said warily.

Tom ignored him again. "Joe, we're just about ready," he called towards the back of the barn.

Sam craned his head to look. When the third man had disappeared back there after securing them to the chairs, he'd forgotten about him. Now he saw that the man in the ball cap was standing inside his own protective circle of symbols a few feet away from one of the stall doors.

And there was something moving inside the stall.

Next to him, Harry stood up and motioned to his father. Sam looked down and realized the protective circle around his chair was large enough for the other two men to stand in, and that Tom was moving inside it. He looked over at Dean, who was sitting on an expanse of unmarked concrete.

Apparently Dean had noticed the same thing. "Uh, you guys forgetting something?" he asked.

"We forget anything, Joe?" Tom called out.

The other man looked over at the four of them. "Nope, looks good to me."

Dean's eyes widened in unison with Sam's, and the older man started struggling with the chair, trying to inch his way closer to where Sam was.

"Cool it." Tom raised his gun and pointed it at Dean. "You're such a tough guy, oughta be easy to sit there and take it."

Dean stilled and regarded the weapon with unease. "What is this, damned if I do and damned if I don't?"

"Not exactly." Sam felt a heavy hand come down on his shoulder. "It's damned if _he_ doesn't."

Before Sam could question what that meant, a scraping sound caught his attention. He whipped his head around to see Joe reaching out with a long hook to pull open the stall door. As he did so, Sam could see the edge of a circle that looked all too familiar. It was a devil's trap, drawn inside the stall itself.

And as he watched, Joe reached out and scratched away an inch's worth of black paint from the ground.

Sam's throat went dry. Dean was the only one who was unprotected, and there was a demon inside this barn that had just been let loose. He bent forward to try and push his own chair out of the circle, but Dean's bark of "Sam!" echoed around the room at the same time that Harry put his full weight on the back of the chair to hold it in place.

Then he heard Harry say, "Hang on, this'll be better." And he rotated the chair so that Sam was directly facing his brother. Dean's chin was up, his jaw tightening and his eyes darkening as they fixed on something behind Sam.

Sam twisted his head back around in time to see a petite female figure emerge from the stall, disdainfully picking bits of straw out of her hair. "Honestly, could you boys be any more primitive?" she asked in a rich alto voice. "I mean, really: a barn?" She looked around casually, but Sam could read the careful assessment she was making of the scene: five humans in the room, and only one of them easily accessible. His heart lodged in his throat as her gaze fixed on Dean, and a predatory smile crept over her face.

She slowly walked forward, hips swinging, long blonde hair fanning out behind her, her black eyes visible from ten feet away. "Well, well, well," she said, never taking her eyes off Dean. "Primitive though the accommodations may be, this is definitely worth the wait."

Dean cleared his throat. "That's what all the girls say," he replied. "Sorry, skank, but I don't think you're my type."

"I've heard otherwise," she purred as she came closer. "I've heard that you had quite the fan club, Dean Winchester, made up of all sorts of people like me. They were lining up from all over to…" She trailed off and eyed Dean up and down with a lewd stare. "Have their way with you."

A shudder swept over Sam at the evil promise in her voice. He cast a quick glance at Dean and saw a sheen of sweat on his brow, though his eyes remained steady and his shoulders never stopped twitching, his fingers apparently picking at the knots behind him.

Then Sam heard a rustle of paper next to him and looked over to see Harry pulling a piece of paper out of his pocket and unfolding it. From the couple of words that Sam could make out, it appeared to be an exorcism. He let out a breath. Okay, so having a demon on the loose was not the smartest thing, and he wasn't thrilled that they were letting it taunt Dean like this, but at least they were about to get rid of it.

The blonde stopped in front of Sam and looked down at him. "And it's an honor to meet you, little brother," she said silkily. "I've heard so many…_interesting_ things about you."

Straightening his shoulders, Sam lifted his face towards her. "Get the hell out of here," he demanded.

She laughed. "What, are you going to make me?" Her eyes widened in mock fear. "Oh, I forgot, you actually can. Silly me." She leaned closer, resting her elbows on the solid but invisible wall above the protective circle, her heart-shaped face framed between her forearms. "You know what happens if you do, though, don't you?"

_An angel strikes me down?_ He'd already been struck dead by a lightning bolt once this week and didn't relish the thought of it happening again. "No, what?" he snapped back.

Her tongue came out and slowly ran over her cherry-red lips. "You become more of what you were meant to be, Sam." Her black eyes gleamed, and she let out another silvery laugh. "One step closer to your true self. One step closer to who you were born to be."

"Quit lying, bitch." Dean's voice cut sharply though the air.

"Oh, they're not lies," she said, slowly drawing away from Sam and coming over to stand in front of Dean. "You know that we do tell the truth on occasion." She reached out and laid a hand on top of Dean's head, and her voice dropped to a growl. "Like how much it's going to hurt."

The grunt that Dean let out as his head jerked back and his eyes snapped shut would have been a full-throated scream from any other man. Sam was sure of that. On a pre-Hell Dean, it would at least have been a loud cry. The way the veins were standing out on his neck and his limbs were tensing, Sam could tell that it had to be nothing but sheer pain the demon was forcing into him.

But true to his earlier boasts, Dean had been through far worse in the last half-year than what any living human being had ever withstood. And when the demon withdrew her hand and took a step back, her fine eyebrows furrowing in frustration, Sam felt a tiny surge of pride in his brother.

That pride quickly turned to fear when he saw her eyes light upon Harry's knife, lying on the ground and stained with the Winchesters' blood. She slowly walked over and picked it up by the leather-wrapped handle, hefting it in her hand. Sam watched in dread as she brought it up to Dean's face and twisted it back and forth, the overhead lights flashing off the silver and the length of the blade reflecting in his wide green eyes.

"Do you know what it's going to be worth to me to be the one to bring you back?" she said conversationally. "You've been on the most wanted list for two months, and here you are being handed to me on a platter." Then she paused and looked over at the men standing behind Sam, her eyes narrowing. "What's the catch?" she asked.

Sam heard Tom's voice from behind him. "You understand that we can't let you walk out of here. But unless someone interferes, you _can_ take something with you when you go."

"You sick son-of-a—" Sam whirled around, pulling at the ropes across his torso, eyes shooting daggers at the man who instantly brought his gun up to rest at Sam's neck.

"He's not supposed to be here anyway, Sam," Tom said. "You know that. I'm sorry he died, but he made his choice and you should have lived with it. Whatever sick necromancy you did to bring him back is just another reason why we had to hunt you down. At least this way, he'll be back where he belongs."

"He does not belong in Hell!" Sam roared.

"Some of us beg to differ on that." Sam turned back around at the purr of the demon's voice. When she saw he was looking at her, she smiled maliciously. "Besides, you'll have to catch me if you want to keep me from getting away, old man. In the meantime, though…"

She reached forward again and caressed Dean's cheek with her slender fingers. He jerked his head back and she chuckled. "Funny, I didn't think you were the shy type." She held up the knife again and kept it there long enough for Dean's throat to work in a long swallow before she tossed the weapon aside with a clatter.

Then she reached out and wrapped one hand around Dean's neck.

Dean strained his head backwards, but the high back of the chair was in the way. The defiant look on his face remained, but as her grip began to tighten, his eyes betrayed him. They were filled with fear, and Sam knew it was only his brother's indomitable willpower that was keeping him from screaming in sheer terror, not at what the demon was doing to him, but what was going to happen to him if she killed him.

There was no reason to believe that Dean's death wouldn't send him straight back to Hell.

There was no way Sam was going to let that happen.

"Please," he said, turning to Harry. "You have the exorcism rite in your hand. There's no need to do this. Just send her out of here. You don't need to torture an innocent man." He swallowed hard. "Whatever you want to know about me, I'll tell you."

Harry snorted. "It's not what we want to hear from you, demon boy. It's what we want to see."

Sam inhaled sharply. In front of him, Dean was straining against the ropes that held him, struggling against the slender hand around his throat, but it was clearly to no avail. There was only one way Sam could help him now, and he'd been forbidden to do it. But if God and His angels thought highly enough of Dean to drag him out of the pit, would they really condemn Sam for doing everything he could to save him?

Then an idea struck him from what he'd told Tom earlier: he'd memorized the words of multiple exorcism rites after the Devils' Gate opened, which meant he didn't need a book or any freaky powers to take care of this. He opened his mouth and shouted, "_Exorcizo te, inmundissime spiritus, omnis incursio_—"

The demon was just starting to turn to him in angry fear when he was cut off by a large hand clamping over his mouth. "That's not what I meant, you bastard," he heard Harry growl. "Dad, help me out here."

A moment later, Harry's hand and Tom's gun were removed and a handkerchief was wrapped across Sam's mouth. He bucked and fought, but the gag was tied securely in place. Then he tried to form the words of the exorcism rite anyway, but they weren't even understandable to his own ears, which meant they sure weren't going to work on the demon.

The blonde was giving him a wide grin from where she stood in front of Dean, her hand momentarily relaxed around his neck as she watched Sam's struggles. "Too bad, Sammy. Looks like if you want me, you're going to have come and get me." Her eyes flashed black. "Which means you can't save your brother and yourself."

Then her hand slowly tightened again.

Dean was looking at him intently even as he struggled for air. "Don't do it, Sam," he croaked out. "You know what…Cass and his…friend…told you." Then his back arched as the demon squeezed harder, and Sam could see his face starting to turn red as oxygen failed to reach his lungs.

"Please!" he tried to shout through the gag, looking up at Tom.

The older hunter didn't even acknowledge him, watching the scene being played out with a stoic expression.

A strangled noise from Dean caught his attention, and he turned back to see the demon's face wreathed in delight as she watched the light dim in his brother's eyes. Sam choked back a cry of his own and dimly wondered how much this transgression was going to count against him.

Because there was nothing else he could do.

Closing his eyes, Sam opened his right hand where it was bound behind him, reaching out with his thoughts towards where Dean was struggling. In his mind's eye, he saw not the blonde bombshell that had stalked through the barn, but a nightmare creature towering over his brother, enveloping him in a black miasma of darkness. Sam focused on the center of that cloud, the darkest part of it, fingertips straining as if he could physically grab it.

When he finally touched it, his stomach roiled as it always did. Humans weren't meant to come into contact with pure evil like this, and he had occasionally wondered if the function his demon-given blood served wasn't in part to protect him from what no ordinary person could withstand. It was still far from pleasant, but at least it was bearable.

He concentrated on pulling, on separating out the demon's form from that of the young woman, peeling away the darkness without taking any of her essence along for the ride. His fingers were closing together now, his arms and chest straining against the ropes that bound him to the chair, his head starting to pound as the enormity of the task began to make itself clear. He'd never been restrained while doing this, but then Ruby had said that physically reaching out was largely a symbolic gesture anyway. He didn't realize how much he had come to rely on it until it was unavailable.

There was one dark tendril still wrapped around the girl's outstretched arm, and Sam pried it loose, a grimace of concentration distorting his features. His hand was now in a fist, the demon's essence breaking loose from the possessed woman and leaking out through her mouth and chest. Eyes still closed, he nevertheless sensed her turning towards him, the demon's anger twisting her face as she fought the inevitable.

Sam pulled with everything he had, his body shuddering with the effort. Black wisps continued to sink towards the ground, and the young woman fell to her knees. Finally he felt the last bit of darkness come out of her, and he flattened his hand and pressed his palm downward. A sizzling sound made his eyes fly open in time to see a black patch burning into the concrete floor.

Then everything went still.

Sam dropped his head back against the chair in exhaustion, shutting his eyes again, not willing to see the expression on Dean's face or on their captors'. There was nothing else he could have done—Dean had to understand that. If Tom and company wanted to see their own trick demon-killer perform, well, they had certainly gotten their wish. He grimaced as a late bolt of pain shot through his skull, the pounding in his temples drowning out nearly all other sensations.

"Holy shit." The words came from Harry, who'd been standing within the circle next to Sam throughout the exorcism. "Holy shit. Did you see that?"

Expecting a snarky comeback from Dean, Sam was disappointed when it didn't come. It finally got him to open his eyes and look at his brother.

Dean was looking back at him with the same expression he'd had in the mausoleum on Halloween: a little awe, a little fear, and a little terror, not of Sam but for him. This time, the fear was clearly of the hunters around them, who had just gotten all the proof they could handle that yes, Sam was a supernatural freak.

The question that he saw burning in his brother's eyes was the same one that was driving spikes of tension throughout his body: what were they going to do about it?

oooooooooooooo

And what are _you_ going to do about it? Well, you're going to click on that Review link, aren't you? Er, please?


	6. Chapter 6: Away From Me

I am seriously blown away by the number of reviews that last chapter got. Thank you so much!

This chapter's a little longer than most. Hopefully it'll keep you interested until we can get back to the Winchester bondage…er, that is, the boys in trouble.

ooooooooooooooooo

Can't see the future  
It's gettin' away from me  
I just watch the taillights glowing  
--U2, "One Step Closer"

ooooooooooooooooo

**One day earlier**

Sam carefully closed another crumbling volume of Clearwater County history and sat back in the creaking wooden chair, squeezing his eyes shut to relieve the tension of poring over faded hand-written records for the past two hours.

When he'd been absorbed in something that intensely for that long, it always took a moment for the real world to return. His mind slowly drifted away from pioneers and miners and back to the warm, cheery library here in the county seat of Orofino. It was well-lit, quaint, and had more than enough information about early settlement in the area to explain who their ghost really was.

Also, it was pretty much empty. Sam glumly realized that one of the best features about the library at the moment was that Dean wasn't here.

He felt like a traitor for thinking that, after months of desperate wishing and some even more desperate actions aimed at getting his brother back. He felt like he was being ungrateful for the literal miracle that had occurred and that if he dared voice relief at his brother's absence, even if only in his head, Dean would be yanked away from him again.

The problem was, Dean wasn't really back. Sam sighed and stacked the book on top of the precarious pile to his left. He'd tried to get his brother to open up, tried to get him to say _anything_ about the four months he'd spent in Hell, only to be told point blank that the older man might remember every vivid detail but was not sharing. In the meantime, he'd continue to sleep poorly and drink more and find it a little harder to focus on driving and hunting than he should.

They both would.

Sam straightened the pages of notes he'd taken and pulled the next book towards him from the dwindling pile on his right. He knew he wasn't the same man he'd been on May 1st, either. There was a distance between who he was now and who he had been then—a difference that was subtle, but distinct. And now Dean was on the far side of a divide that had started when Sam had pulled a knife on what he was afraid to believe was his own brother. Dean's visitation by an angel, Sam lying about using his abilities, Dean finding out in the worst way possible and forbidding him to use said abilities, Sam banishing a demon more powerful than any he had ever faced, with his brother as a horrified onlooker…all of these things were conspiring to keep them apart.

He let out a soft snort. Okay, maybe that language was more suited to Romeo and Juliet than the Winchesters. Whatever it was, there was certainly a tension between them that echoed the first months after his nightmare at Stanford. Then, he'd welcomed the hunts as something to focus on aside from his overwhelming grief, and Dean had followed suit, trying to take care of his little brother the best he could. They both knew that they'd each had experiences the other didn't want to hear about or couldn't understand, but they'd tacitly buried their differences and moved on, forging a new bond through the search for their father and its horrible aftermath.

But now…they'd both been changed by so much, and by each other, to some extent. Sam idly traced a doodle carved into the wooden desk by a long-ago penknife. He couldn't tell Dean everything he'd done to try and bring him back. There was no way. And Dean was apparently dead set against telling him anything about his time in Hell. And so here they stood at a stalemate.

Sam let out another sigh and flipped open the cover of a dusty blue volume, this one an early pioneer's account of their time in Clearwater County. As he flipped through the pages, he felt a calm steal over him. It was so quiet in here, so peaceful, but he still felt the excitement of the hunt via the spidery handwriting in faded ink on the page before him. The corner of his mouth turned up as he remembered a freshman term paper that had involved weeks of research in the mustiest corners of more than one Bay Area library and resulted in an astonished professor who hadn't anticipated having forty pages to grade from that particular assignment.

Sam had sheepishly shrugged and claimed a long-standing interest in local history, which was true to a certain extent. More accurately, it was the freedom to pursue whatever leads he wanted and to delve as deeply as he could into what had captivated him. He eventually figured out how to limit the hours he devoted to any particular project, but library research was always the best part of any assignment.

It has been one of the best things about being at Stanford: he was surrounded by fellow geeks. Enjoying research didn't make him weird; there, it was perfectly normal. His friends would understand if he wanted to hang out in the library rather than going out; sure; they'd tease him, but next week they'd be doing the same thing. And the push-pull relationship he'd had with Dean and his dad, caught between them needing the results of his research while giving him a hard time about liking it, was completely absent.

Research was also a good way to get lost, to distract himself from the outside world. Sure, he'd already known that from hours spent buried in local historical records or old newspaper accounts, at least to some extent. Many a fiery disagreement with his father had subsided into a smolder as he paged through musty books and painstakingly transcribed long-forgotten rituals and symbols. Occasionally it had occurred to him to wonder if that was why John always sent him to the library, as a means of cooling his heels. More likely, Sam knew, was the fact that Dean whined about how boring it was while Sam soaked it up.

Still, there'd always been the urgent pressure in the back of his head, the deadline of impending death or destruction that he could never ignore, the niggling concern that if he missed a detail or pronounced something wrong, he or his loved ones were doomed.

Term papers didn't come with that kind of pressure.

So now here he was, still doing the library thing, still totally enthralled as a new avenue opened up before him. Still trying to distract himself from the events of the last few days by digging up details of events that occurred long before he was born, long before his grandfather became possessed by the yellow-eyed demon and forced his mother into a deal with consequences that still weren't over.

Sam shook his head. He could brood about his demon-bequeathed blood later. Right now, there was a spirit to hunt down.

He'd gotten over halfway through the book before the name he was looking for popped up. Then there were pages' worth of careful notes to take, intermingled with jotted thoughts on what this historical record meant to their case. He'd just finished the book and stacked it on top of the others when the floorboards behind him creaked.

Startled, Sam whirled to see Dean coming up behind him, looking as tired as he always did these days. "Hey," the older man said, dropping into the chair next to him. "You figure it out yet?"

"Maybe," Sam answered. "You have any luck with the death records?"

Dean shook his head. "Cremated. There must be something else he's holding onto, although we still don't have any idea why he's come out of the woodwork now."

"Or it's not Michael Etchebarry."

Dean cocked his head to the side. "Rose was pretty sure it was him."

"Yeah, I know, but check this out." Sam dug through the pile of books on his left until he found an old county directory. He checked his notes, flipped to a page, and placed the open book in front of his brother. Tapping a photograph with the cap of his pen, he said, "I think this is who we're looking for."

He watched Dean's eyes roam over the page, taking in the old images and names until he lighted on the one that looked nearly identical to the photograph Rose had shown them on their way out of her house. "Miguel Eta—Etka—what the hell's an X doing in the middle of a name like that?"

"Etxberri. It's pronounced like a 'ch'. So it still sounds like Etchebarry."

Dean wrinkled up his nose. "Huh. What kind of a name is that?"

"It's Basque," Sam answered, pleased that he had an interesting story here to tell. "Euskara, actually."

"You-ska-who?" Dean asked, eyebrows going into their fully-furrowed mode.

"It's the language of the Basque people," Sam explained, warming to his subject. "It's not related to any other language in the world. It's really cool, 'cause scholars can't figure out how this group of people on the edge of Europe ended up speaking a language that's like nothing else in the world."

"Yeah, but Miguel sure sounds familiar." Dean turned the page, where more portraits awaited his gaze.

"A lot of the immigrants to the U.S. came through South America, so their first names reflect that. But since their last names are tied to where they're from, those are more often in Euskara." He'd read a little about the Basque and their linguistic oddities in college, and it was nice to be able to put a little of that knowledge to use.

Dean flattened his hands on top of the open book. "This is fascinating, Sammy, really it is, but what does it have to do with an antique store in Idaho?"

Sam pressed his lips together. _Well, at least one of us thinks I'm putting it to use_. "There were a lot of Basque settlers in this region; I guess by the time they started migrating over here, Idaho and Nevada were pretty much all that was left for homesteading."

"Poor bastards," Dean muttered. "Let me guess, the farming didn't go so well?"

"Right, so most of them turned to sheepherding, but some tried mining. Including one Miguel Etxberri, who ended up staking a mining claim and had a little luck with gold, which is how he paid for his wife and kids to come over."

Dean ran a hand over his mouth. "So our ghost isn't from 1980, he's from 1880? And he's not really stealing from Rose, he's just taking his stuff back?"

"More like 1890, but yeah, pretty much." Sam paged back through his notes. "He was killed in 1891, two weeks before his family arrived by steamship via Seattle."

"Man, that sucks goats." Dean stared down at the images on the page. "Where'd he die?"

The corner of Sam's mouth quirked up. "Elk River."

Dean muttered, "Big shocker."

"Yeah, his stake was about ten miles out of town, in what's now national forest land. Apparently a landslide did him in."

"A landslide?" Dean frowned. "What's he hanging around taking his stuff back for now? It's not like there's anyone for him to get revenge on."

"No, but there was a 3.5 earthquake here a month ago, strong enough to dislodge parts of an old slide. Could be his bones were uncovered and his spirit is restless." Quaint though it might have been, the Orofino library did have wireless, and the U.S. Geological Survey had a great website.

"Well, you just have all the answers, don't you, Sammy?" Dean replied, rubbing a hand over his jaw.

Sam frowned and ignored the jibe. "Since he hasn't escalated beyond theft, it should be pretty simple to put him to rest."

"Yeah, well, when is anything ever simple?" Dean muttered tiredly.

Sam shot him a worried look. As soon as Dean saw it, he straightened his shoulders and put on a cocky grin. "Eh, simple is boring."

Dropping his eyes to the desktop, Sam traced the same doodle as before with his pen. "Yeah, well, maybe a little simple now and then isn't a bad thing," he murmured.

He felt Dean's eyes on him but didn't turn to look. After a brief silence, Dean asked, "So whadda we got to do to take care of this guy?"

He shrugged one shoulder. "Depends why he's roaming around, but I would guess a salt-and-burn oughta do it."

Dean closed the book in front of him and gave it a hard pat. "All right then, you got a location on the landslide?"

"Close enough, I think. I can probably go online and find some remote sensing images to pinpoint the exact location. Even though it was over a hundred years ago, there should still be a scar." Sam frowned at the remaining books on the table, trying to remember what he had pulled them out for. There was the one about Basque folktales and the one about spiritual beliefs; those could still come in handy. The question was, what story should he tell the librarian downstairs to get her to let him borrow them?

He picked up the books and stood, gathering his notes and stuffing them under one arm. "Come on, let's go. I've just got to check these out."

Dean grabbed the smaller book from him and tucked it away against the small of his back, jammed into the waistband of his jeans as if it were a knife or a gun. "We can bring it back later, Sam."

He let out a sigh. "What's wrong with doing things the proper way? These are probably valuable books, and you know we won't get around to bringing it back."

"Then we'll drop 'em in the mail," Dean responded in a long-suffering tone. "Can we go now?"

Sam glared at his brother for a few seconds before he realized Dean was deliberately not looking at him. "Fine," he said, pushing in the chair and secreting away the book he still held in the same fashion his brother had. "Let's go."

ooooooo

Later that night, Sam came out of the bathroom in his boxers, toweling off his hair to see the television blaring away without an audience. Dean was sitting cross-legged on his bed, so engrossed in the folktale book that he didn't notice Sam's presence.

Sam leaned against the edge of the doorway for a moment and looked at his brother. He could imagine what Dean would say if he saw him—_Dude, you're watching me _read_? Someone needs to get out more_. But in contrast to his earlier thoughts in the library, at the moment he was struck by how valuable, how precious it was to simply have him there. Even if they didn't have as much in common as they used to, even if there was a widening and worrying gulf between them, sometimes it did his heart good just to watch.

Besides, this was good teasing material for later.

A fond smile turned up the corners of his mouth. "Learn anything?" he asked.

Dean's head shot up, his gaze wary. When he saw Sam's expression was more curious than mocking, he sat up against the headboard and unfolded his legs, saying, "Yeah, maybe."

Sam made a _Go on_ gesture as he tossed the towel back into the bathroom.

Dean plopped the open book onto his lap. "Atlantis, dude."

"Stargate?" Sam asked, looking towards the TV and back.

Dean rolled his eyes. "No, moron, the underwater city. According to this," he tapped the book, "some people think the Basques used to live in Atlantis until it sank under the ocean. Explains why their language is so special."

"Huh." Sam started digging through his duffel for sleeping clothes. "What does that have to do with our miner friend?"

There was a pause. Then Dean said a little too offhandedly, "Nothin'. I just thought it was cool."

Sam sighed into the duffel. Trust him to shut down Dean's one moment of discovery in the last few weeks that had brought him something like excitement. "Okay, that is cool. Anything else?"

"Well, they've got the usual imps and spirits and giants and witches, though I have no idea if any of them came over on the boat." Dean paged through the book. "Then there's the moon goddess and her rituals." He waggled his eyebrows at Sam.

"Sorry to disappoint you, but I don't think that's what we're dealing with here," Sam replied, pulling a t-shirt over his head.

"Ah well, a guy can dream." Dean leaned back against the headboard and flipped to another chapter. He continued to read silently as Sam dropped onto his bed, wincing at the hardness of the mattress, and grabbed off the nightstand the second book that they'd "borrowed" from the historical society before picking up the remote to turn off the TV.

A few minutes passed in companionable silence. Sam was amused at how Dean would check out folktales or myths when he had research as an excuse, given his normal disdain for fairy tales as "gay" or childish. He suspected it was from a shortage of reading fairy tales as a kid; neither of them had been raised to see the Grimm Brothers as anything but a handbook for dealing with the supernatural. So now, when Dean felt he could get away with it, he'd indulge in a story or two. Sam had never called him on it, didn't want him to stop doing something that brought him amusement without any risk of injury or incarceration.

Flat on his back, head propped up with pillows, Sam was just getting into the first chapter on the pre-Christian beliefs of the Basques when Dean sat up sharply. "Hey, check this out. 'It's a long-standing belief among certain of the Euskal—You-skal—whatever, the Basques—that an unburied and unburned body is immortal." He looked up at Sam. "Not likely that a guy who was killed in a rockslide was burned or buried, at least not in the traditional sense."

Sam lifted his eyebrows. "For real?"

"No, I'm making up things because I'm bored," came the sarcastic response. "Yes, for real, Sam. Apparently there's a big complicated ritual involved if one of these immortals needs to be gotten rid of." He grinned, eyes twinkling. "You suppose there's a broadsword and a beheading involved? 'Cause that would be really cool." He lifted one arm, brandishing an imaginary sword. "There can be only one!"

Sam groaned and slumped back against the headboard, which let out a loud creak in protest. "Do you have any idea how hard it's going to be to find a ritual online for banishing an immortal spirit in Euskara?"

"Do not doubt the strength of your Google-fu, little brother," Dean replied in a fake Chinese accent.

Sam snorted. "What else does it say?" he asked, rolling over and propping himself up on one elbow.

Dean shrugged. "That's it. It's like the intro paragraph to a story, that's all."

"Okay, so read the story and tell me what it says," Sam replied.

"Yes, Professor Winchester," Dean sing-songed in response.

Sam reached behind him and grabbed the edge of a pillow, swinging it in a long arc until it thwacked Dean in the head. He hastily pulled it back before his brother could claim possession of it, having been burned a few times in the past.

Dean wasn't playing, though, instead sidling away against the headboard so that he was out of range. Sam shrugged and returned to his reading.

The chapter was filled with the usual disclaimers and proclamations that little was known of pre-Christian history because the Euskaldunak, as they referred to themselves, transmitted their history in oral rather than written form. Sam leafed through descriptions of what had been pieced together about ancient gods and goddesses, sun and moon stories, and forest spirits, but didn't find anything of use. He occasionally cast a glance over at Dean and slowly became aware that his expression seemed to grow darker with every page he turned.

Finally, just as Sam was about to ask him what was wrong, Dean abruptly clapped the book shut and tossed it in the direction of his duffel. "Okay, here's hoping the hot water heater's recharged after your shower, Samantha."

"How was the story?" Sam asked, letting the customary insult roll off his back.

Dean shrugged one shoulder and bounded off the bed. "Not worth reading," he replied casually. "Hope you got better luck." Then he disappeared into the bathroom.

Sam frowned after him. Dean had gotten rid of the book like it was burning him. His curiosity piqued, he levered himself off the rock-solid mattress and made his way over to the army green duffel bag against the far wall. Pausing to make sure the shower was running, he picked up the red-covered book of folktales and made his way back to his bed.

It took a little while to find the story Dean had referred to, and the introductory paragraph was pretty much what his brother had read aloud. He sat cross-legged on the bed and started to read.

It only took a few minutes more to realize why Dean had (for him) freaked out. The story was about two brothers, the younger of whom was killed in a hunting accident and the older of whom couldn't bear the thought of being without him. Rather than following the traditional burial rites, he'd kept his brother's body in his house. Sam wrinkled his nose at that part but read on.

Sure enough, within a few days' time, the corpse had returned to animation. But as was so often the case with resurrection folklore—and Sam had read pretty much every damn story in existence between last May and September—the restored man wasn't quite himself. In the end, the older brother had to put his younger brother to the sword, following it up by impaling himself and falling on top of his sibling.

Sam shuddered and closed the book, understanding Dean's impulse to hurl it aside. That was a little too close for comfort.

It registered a moment too late that the shower had stopped. A noise made him look up, and he saw Dean standing in the doorway of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his hips, regarding him and the book in his hands with a frown.

It took considerable mental effort for Sam _not_ to shove the book behind his back and pretend it wasn't there.

Silence fell while they looked at each other. Then Dean grumbled, "You always did get into my stuff when you weren't supposed to."

"You never had any stuff for me to get into," Sam shot back halfheartedly.

Dean quirked up the corner of his mouth in acknowledgment. Then, out of the blue, he straightened up and asked in a gravelly voice, "Why didn't you salt and burn me, Sammy?"

Sam felt his heart stutter. _Please don't ask me to talk about that_, he silently pleaded. "Because," he replied, tongue snaking out to moisten his suddenly dry lips.

"You can't say that you didn't know that's what I would have wanted. Because we talked about it. Damn it, you did everything but put your fingers in your ears," Dean demonstrated, "and go 'La-la-la-la-la'." He dropped his hands to his sides. "But we talked about it. And then you didn't even dig down a full six feet."

"I know, Dean," Sam said, dropping his head to stare at the faded pink-and-yellow floral pattern on the bedspread, trying not to remember that awful conversation a week from the end, when it had become pretty clear that only a miracle was going to save his brother.

A miracle that hadn't come until four months too late.

"You know that it's the default assumption for a hunter, any hunter, no matter the circumstances." Dean shifted in place and his voice dropped. "And you were kind of there for Dad, as I recall."

"Damn it, I know!" Sam barked, his head shooting up to glare daggers at his brother. "I know that, okay?"

"Then why?" Dean asked again, the tone of his voice the closest he ever came to pleading when the immediate threat of loss of life wasn't involved.

Sam shook his head and looked away. "I—I couldn't."

A heartbeat passed, and then another. Dean cleared his throat. "Bobby said you told him that I would need my body back. Later."

He grimaced. _Thanks, Bobby_, he thought, but couldn't really blame the older hunter. Sam had shut him out so fast and so thoroughly that he was surprised he hadn't staged some kind of intervention, like siccing Ellen on him or a posse of at least ten hunters to keep him from whatever he was thinking of doing. No, Bobby had trusted Sam not to do anything foolish when it came to the remains of one Dean Winchester, had played along and let Sam's impaired judgment lead the way.

Sam hoped Bobby never found out how sadly misplaced that trust had almost been.

"Sam, what did you do?" Dean asked more insistently.

"Nothing," he automatically replied. "It was an angel. It wasn't me."

Dean turned so his bare left shoulder was toward Sam, the angry red handprint still standing out against his pale skin. "I know what _happened_. I need to know what you _tried_."

Sam shook his head, feeling the helplessness wash over him again. "Nothing worked, man. We've been over this before."

"Sam, I—"

"Nothing. Worked." Sam cut him off in the best imitation of their father's voice that he could manage. "Let it go, Dean."

Dean's eyes widened, but he shut up, turning back into the bathroom and slamming the door behind him.

Sam let out a gusty sigh and dropped his head forward, wondering if they were ever going to be able to move past this. All the secrets they were keeping from each other—was it worth it? Wouldn't they be better off coming clean, like he'd tried to make Dean do back in Washington?

Then he thought of what Dean would say if he knew everything that had gone on in his absence, and Sam hardened his heart. Some secrets really _did_ need to be kept, even from the person closest to you.

_Especially_ from the person closest to you.

ooooooooooooooooo

There's no need to keep any secrets from me…go ahead and tell me what you think! And Happy New Year to each and every one of you!


	7. Chapter 7: Hold On

This is where I remind you, dear reader, that I wrote most of this story back in November, well before any promos were out for episode 4.12. Cross my heart and ask my beta reader; I guess I'm just psychic.

Disclaimer and beta thanks are in Chapter 1.

ooooooooooooooooo

Hold on world 'cause you don't know what's coming  
Hold on world 'cause I'm not jumping off  
--R.E.M., "Around the Sun"

ooooooooooooooooo

The burning stench that was oozing from the patch of concrete right in front of him was making Dean's stomach turn. It was a peculiar mixture of sulfur and burnt skin and other nasty odors, stirring up all sorts of memories that he would much rather stayed buried. Unfortunately, his oxygen-starved lungs needed to draw in air, no matter what it smelled like, and so his panting breaths kept bringing the stench right on in.

On the other side of the charred concrete, the blonde woman whose hand had been wrapped around his neck seconds ago was crumpled in a heap. From here, he could just make out her chest rising and falling, and that amazed him even more. He'd never been so close before when Sam had used his Jedi mind-trick on a demon, and it had been impressive, to say the least.

Of course, he'd missed the first part of it what with not being able to breathe and all, but watching the black smoke come pouring out of the possessed woman's body had been jaw-dropping. For a moment, he'd been afraid that the demon would latch on to him, even with his protective tattoo, but then he remembered that Sam wasn't just exorcising demons.

He was sending them straight to Hell.

Dean swallowed and looked up at his brother. Sam's eyes were shut tight, his body trembling a little, a drop or two of blood staining his upper lip above the handkerchief gag. He didn't look nearly as bad as when Dean had patched him up after taking on Samhain, but then on that occasion he hadn't already been through a few rounds of physical abuse.

"Holy shit," the other kid burst out. "Holy shit, did you see that?"

_Kinda hard to miss, jackass_, he thought. He looked down at the ground again and noticed for the first time that his jeans were singed from knee to ankle. _Huh_. He hadn't even felt the heat.

When he looked back up, Sam was watching him. He knew that his own expression was as unguarded as he ever let it get, fear and protectiveness and a little bit of pride all on display, because damn, this was something he didn't know how to handle. If it was just him and Sam trying to deal with the consequences…well, that scene had already been played out in a mausoleum a few weeks ago, explained away as self-defense and followed by a darker shade of distance between them.

Now, though, to know that Sam had been given a specific warning by both an angel _and_ a demon and had still done this…Dean couldn't believe it. There was no way his life was worth that kind of a risk, no way at all. He'd willingly gone to Hell to save Sam's life, and even though it had broken him in ways he knew would never heal, he'd do it again in a heartbeat if it meant saving his brother's soul.

Of course, that was pretty much moot considering they had an audience. An audience that seemed to have made Dean's dark warning come true about wanting to hunt Sam if he didn't know him. And it was pretty hard to deny what had just happened in front of them all.

Right now, though, Sam looked afraid, more like a scared little kid than anyone who had the ability to snuff out a demon with his mind had the right to be. He wasn't looking at any of their three captors, who at the moment seemed to be dumbstruck by what they'd witnessed.

Right now, Sam was looking at his big brother.

Dean shot back a look filled with all of the reassurance he could muster while still being scared to death for the guy. Sam needed to know that he wasn't afraid of him. Come to think of it, maybe everyone in this room needed to know that.

And in a flash, he understood the best way to play this.

"Thanks, bro," he called out as casually as he could, wincing a little at the roughness of his voice over his throat. "Try not to cut it so close next time, okay?"

Sam was staring at him in bewilderment, but the expressions on Tom and Harry's faces were even better. Harry's jaw had dropped open, and he was looking back and forth between the brothers as if they were going to snap their bonds like paper and rise up at any second. Tom looked downright confused, glancing down at the black spot on the ground and then back at Dean. "What the hell are you talking about, boy?" he finally growled. "There's not going to _be_ a next time."

"Damn straight," Dean retorted. "Once people get the word that you deliberately set loose a demon to torture another hunter, you'll be lucky not to be dropped into a vampire nest."

"How can you say that?" Harry demanded, starting forward. Tom grabbed his arm, and Harry came to a sudden halt, looking down at the protective circle that his sneaker was about to cross over, his angry expression turning hesitant.

Dean let out a snort. "Oh come on, you pansy-ass. That was the point, wasn't it? To get rid of the demon?" He made as if to spread his hands wide, then grimaced in frustration as the ropes kept his arms in place. "No one here but me and a formerly possessed woman, who I might add could use a little help. Unless you're the ones who stuck the demon inside her."

"She was possessed when we found her," Harry insisted, then stopped, shooting a glance over his shoulder at his father.

Joe called out from the far side of the barn. "Tom, looks like it's all clear to me."

The older man frowned. "Could be a trick. Could have gone into him," he said, gesturing at Dean.

"Could be you didn't think through this part of your plan too carefully," he retorted. "Did it look like it even got near me?" He winced as his abused throat protested the volume he was putting forth. _Aside from the part where it was strangling me._ He went on, mentally crossing his fingers, "When Sammy does a job, he does it right."

That got a reaction. "This is not doing a job." Tom's hand came down heavily on Sam's shoulder, and Dean saw his brother flinch. "This is doing the devil's work. It's unnatural and immoral and it makes him the kind of thing people like you and me are supposed to kill, not encourage."

"Says who?" he shot back. _Okay, multiple angels say so, but they're not here right now, are they?_ "This woman's alive, which means Sam's showing more concern for her than any of you did. He saved my life, which, again." He lifted his eyebrows and tilted his head forward as if to say, _Unlike you idiots_. "And he was running around for a whole year with a knife that a demon made to kill other demons, and no one ever gave him shit for that. Why is this different?"

"Because it's in his blood," Tom retorted. "You heard what she said. He's turning into one of them."

"That is such crap," Dean responded firmly, and he saw Sam's eyebrows lift a little. "That whole blood thing. You cut him with a goddamn silver knife and it didn't smoke, did it?" Without waiting for an answer, he went on, "Any of you ever been possessed?"

Harry opened his mouth, and Tom cuffed the back of his head. "What does that have to do with anything?" the older man barked.

Dean nodded down at the unconscious woman on the floor. "You think she's got demon blood in her right now?"

"'Course not." That was Joe, who was slowly coming forward from the far side of the barn. "It's all gone, right?"

"It was never there in the first place. Possession doesn't work like that." He shifted his gaze back to Tom, who was listening intently. "Say someone who was possessed by a demon fed some of their blood to someone else. It's human blood they're using, not demon, right?"

Tom's eyes narrowed, as if he knew he was being tricked into something. "Maybe," he said slowly.

Dean let out an exasperated sigh for theatrical effect as he continued to make his case. Was this what being a lawyer was like? Maybe he was the one who should have tried to go to law school. "There's no maybe about it," he insisted. "Just 'cause your eyes go black doesn't mean your blood does, too."

"So what's your point?" Harry asked belligerently.

"The point is, whatever rumor you heard about Sam having demon blood, it isn't true. There's no way it could have gotten into him. I was there, I saw the whole thing."

A series of muffled sounds burst out of Sam, and Dean was suddenly glad that his little brother was gagged, or he'd be making some kind of stupid comment that would blow this whole thing. He glared at Sam to shut him up, reading the expression on his face as easily as if he had spoken. _Yes, I know I'm pulling this out of my ass,_ he silently responded. _But they don't know that_.

"You saw the whole thing, huh?" Joe asked. "How about your miraculous resurrection from the dead? Did'ja see how that came about?"

Tom narrowed his eyes. "That's right," he said, taking a few steps forward to look at Dean more closely. "Exactly how did you get here anyway?"

Dean set his jaw and spoke casually. "I think a pickup truck and a couple of asshats with shotguns had something to do with it."

The punch to his cheek wasn't unexpected, but still hurt like hell. "Just what I wanted: a matching set," he muttered, thinking of the earlier blow he'd taken in the motel room.

Tom regarded him closely. "Come to think of it," he said, "you weren't there, were you? So you don't know what he did to resurrect you."

"He didn't do anything," Dean retorted. _And I got that on such good authority that there's no way you'll believe it._

"Uh-huh," the older man said, backing away and returning his attention to Sam. "And why don't I believe that?" he addressed the younger Winchester.

Joe came forward and pulled a knife out of his belt, holding it up in front of Sam. Sam's eyes widened and he shrank back against the chair, eyes glued to the sharp blade. The red-haired man held it up to Sam's face, placing the flat of the blade against his cheek.

"Hey, what are you doing?" Dean demanded.

Sam was deathly still except for the noticeably faster rise and fall of his chest, his eyes fixed on a point in the distance beyond Dean. Then Joe slipped the tip of the knife under the gag and twisted it sideways. Sam winced and jerked away, the material instantly falling apart and away from his face in a testament to the sharpness of the blade. A spot of blood welled up on his cheek where the knife tip had been.

"Now then." Tom leaned forward. "Your turn, boy. What did you do to bring him back from the dead?"

"I didn't do anything," Sam repeated, looking away.

"Oh, but you tried, didn't you?" Tom snagged the closest of the remaining chairs and flipped it around backwards before lowering himself onto it. Beside him, Joe moved until he was standing next to Sam. "You tried some things that no human being is ever supposed to try. You tried things that human beings can't even do. So which one of 'em worked, huh?"

Now Sam was staring back at the older man, and Dean slowly realized that he had the same see-through denial stamped across his face that he'd worn when trying to disavow his supernatural abilities. _God, no,_ Dean thought as his stomach dropped. _Don't tell me he's done something he's gonna regret_.

"Nothing worked," Sam replied, his voice low and rough. "I'm not the one who brought Dean back."

Joe's fist shot out and crashed into Sam's jaw before Dean could voice a protest, snapping his head to the side. The cut he'd gotten from the knife tip opened a little wider, a couple of drops of blood falling down to the ground. "Don't be an idiot. Just tell us what we want to know."

"And then what?" Sam muttered into his shoulder. He slowly straightened up and looked Tom in the eye as he said sarcastically, "Then you're gonna let us go?"

"Depends," came the answer. Tom waited until both brothers were looking at him before going on, "Depends on how much of a threat we think you are."

Sam let out a huff of breath. "You seem to have made up your minds about that already," he said, regarding Tom with a steely glare.

"See, here's the thing." Tom leaned forward like he was sharing a confidence. "Sure, it matters what kind of necromancy you managed to pull off. But it also matters what you tried and failed at. Some spells set things free that shouldn't be. Some summonings call up things that are better left alone." Sam's expression was dissolving into uncertainty as Tom went on, "Even if they don't do what you want them to, they're still out there on the loose." His eyes flicked up to Joe in what Dean recognized as a signal. "And for that, you need to pay."

"Sam!" Dean called out in sudden foreboding, but there was nowhere for his brother to go even if he'd received the warning in time. Joe's left hand shot out to grab Sam by his hair and pull his head back while his right hand came around with the knife.

In another second, the edge of the blade was laying right against Sam's exposed skin.

The first, incongruous thought that crossed Dean's mind was that this why Dad had always yelled at Sam to keep his hair short. The second, more relevant thought as blood began to well up in a thin line across Sam's long neck was to wonder if there was any way to trade his soul a second time for the same person.

The third thought was nothing but sheer terror.

"Get your hands off him!" Dean bellowed, leaning forward in the chair and struggling against the ropes as if they would suddenly give way under his sheer fury alone.

Sam's face was pale, his eyes wide, as he initially tried to jerk back from the blade. His throat worked as he swallowed, and alarm flared further in Dean as the line of blood began to trickle down below the collar of Sam's sweatshirt. His legs strained forward uselessly against the ropes that bound them to the chair.

But then as Dean watched, his brother's face seemed to grow resigned, defeated, and he closed his eyes.

"Sam!" Dean barked urgently. _Don't you give up on me_, his tone of voice said.

A second later, Sam's eyes slowly opened, and he met Dean's gaze. He saw the defeat in Sam's eyes, the wish that this would just all be over—not their captivity, but the whole demon-blood-Apocalypse thing. And he could totally understand that.

Once Dean had accepted the startling realization that Sam had been carrying around the secret of his blood for a whole year, it had dawned on him that it was more than his own deal that had given his little brother so many sleepless nights. It was the burden of dealing with who he was and what he might become, the burden that Dean had tried to shield him from after their father's final words but that had landed upon his broad shoulders anyway. The poor kid probably hadn't had a night of _real_ rest in almost two years now. He'd been hunted by Gordon Walker until he'd killed the man, and now these three creeps thought they were going to rid the world of some evil pestilence when they'd actually be making things worse. And now it looked like Sam was ready to give up.

Well, they could rest once they'd saved the world. And he wasn't going to be able to do that without his brother.

He glared at Sam, willing some of his own defiance to trickle through. Slowly, slowly, it seemed to work. Sam's shoulders straightened, his breathing went from shallow pants to a deeper rhythm, and some of the panic left his face.

"What did you do to try and get your brother out of Hell?" Tom asked, enunciating every word.

"You have no intention of letting me go," Sam retorted, his teeth clenched. "Which means I have no reason to tell you anything."

There was a pause. Then Tom said, "Well, I think we can give you a reason." He nodded at Harry, who smirked, cracked his knuckles, and started to advance on Dean.

Dean tensed in his seat until he realized the guy was moving behind him. He watched Sam's face, tracking Harry's movements through his brother's eyes. Suddenly, Sam's eyes got huge and he had to visibly restrain himself from lunging forward against the knife that was still hovering over his neck. "No, don't!" he cried out.

Casting a look over his shoulder, Dean suddenly felt his pulse go into overdrive. Behind him, Harry had picked up a considerable length of rope off the floor and was fashioning the end into a noose.

A second later, Harry was reaching over him, and Dean tucked his chin down, struggling uselessly against the ropes across his chest. He felt Harry grabbing at the top of his head, unable to gain purchase on his short spikes of hair, and Dean felt a moment of triumph over his shaggy-haired brother.

The triumph was short-lived.

Harry flattened his hand against Dean's forehead and pulled back. Dean strained forward as much as he could, but his neck muscles were already sore from the demon's earlier onslaught, and try as he might, he couldn't keep his head from inching backwards.

Then the rope slipped over his head, and he bucked back and forth, but all to no avail. His captor forced his head back and tightened the rope under his chin, leaving him panting and frustrated and a little bit scared with a frickin' _noose_ around his neck.

A few yards away, Sam had that defeated look on his face again. Dean wanted to make one of his usual wisecracks, but for the first time in a long time, found that he simply couldn't. This was a bad situation, as bad as any they'd been in. Instead he saved his strength for what he was afraid was coming.

Sam's gaze shifted to a spot over Dean's head. Despite himself, he craned his head upward to look at the sounds he was hearing. Harry was tossing the other end of the rope around one of the rafters of the barn, taking a couple of attempts to do so. When he had it, he gave it a good tug, and Dean couldn't help the strangled grunt that escaped him as the noose tightened around his neck.

"You wanted a reason to talk?" Tom said. Behind Sam, Joe gave a malicious grin while keeping the knife secure against his throat. "I think we can give you one." Then he nodded at Harry.

Dean watched warily as Harry scooped up the knife the demon had earlier abandoned on the floor and advanced towards him. He paused in front of Dean, eyeing him with a smirk before bending down to slice through the bonds around his ankles and then cut the rope that bound his chest to the chair.

The second he turned away, Dean dove forward out of the chair, intending to pull the other end of the rope that was around his neck over the rafter and down onto the ground with him.

The hard yank at his neck nearly knocked him out right then and there.

"Dean!" he heard Sam cry out, but he was too busy figuring out why he couldn't breathe to reply. Scrabbling for purchase with his bound hands on the chair he had just fallen out of, he saw that Harry had fastened the other end of the rope to a hook on the barn wall, which meant the rope was being pulled tight by nothing other than Dean's own body weight. He scrambled to his feet as best he could, relieved when the pressure around his neck loosened.

At this rate, he wasn't going to be able to talk for days.

"Harry," Tom said in a commanding voice, nodding at the rope fastened to the wall. "Easy at first."

Dean swallowed hard, watching the young man head towards where the other end of his noose was tied. It was starting to look like he would be lucky to have days available not to be able to talk in.

"You know when they hang a man, they pull something out from under him so that his neck snaps," Tom added, folding his arms over his chest. "Otherwise it takes way too long. The windpipe slowly gets crushed from the man's weight, less and less air gets in, and his body shuts down piece by piece. It's not a pretty way to go."

"Don't," Sam suddenly said, his eyes going to Tom and his tone turning to begging. "Please, don't."

Dean was fumbling with the ropes around his wrists, but the knots hadn't magically loosened since he'd tried the same thing while wrapped up in the back of the truck. Off to his right, Harry had reached the wall of the barn and was starting to loosen the other end of the rope that was fastened around Dean's neck.

"You gonna tell us what you tried to do to get your brother out of Hell?" Tom asked.

"Nothing that worked," Sam instantly answered. "Nothing that could cause any problems, either. I made sure of that. Please, let him go."

Tom leaned over until he was in Sam's face. "You're lying, boy," he said firmly. Then he straightened up and nodded at his son. "Give the hunter here a little persuasion."

Against the wall, Harry had finished untying the rope from the hook. With a sneer at Dean, he grabbed hold of the rope and began to pull.

_God, not again_. His throat had just started to recover from the damn superpowered eight-year-old, and first there was the demon strangulation and now this. Wasn't Sammy's neck the one that usually got something wrapped around it?

His thoughts were cut off as breathing became incrementally harder. He strained up onto his toes, lifting his head as high up as he could, but it was only good for a few seconds. Dean was forced to struggle harder as the pressure around his neck increased, and he was slowly, agonizingly, pulled upwards until he no longer felt the floor underneath his feet.

For the second time that night, the world started to dim around him as his oxygen disappeared.

oooooooooooooo

Reviews are like presents and I'm posting this chapter on my birthday. You fill in the blank…


	8. Chapter 8: Torn Asunder

FYI, right here at the start of this chapter is the halfway point of the story. Thanks again to all of the reviewers, both those I can PM and those I can't. We're starting to get to some of the events that were ominously alluded to in the first chapter, so if you need to go back and refresh your memory, now's the time…

The first chapter also houses the disclaimer and beta thanks.

oooooooooooooo

My faith's been torn asunder  
Tell me is that rollin' thunder  
Or just the sinkin' sound of somethin' righteous goin' under?  
--Bruce Springsteen, "Livin' in the Future"

oooooooooooooo

**Earlier that day**

It was a beautiful November day in the Idaho Rockies. The sun was out, the air was warmly scented with pine, the occasional vistas of distant mountain peaks were breathtaking, and to top things off, Dean could even hear the damn birds chirping. Which was a little weird, because shouldn't they have migrated south by now?

He would have asked Sam, but his little brother wasn't exactly exuding friendliness this afternoon. Cursing under his breath as he stumbled on yet another tree root, he decided that poking the bear with a stick would at least be more entertaining than stumbling along in silence like they'd been doing since noon. "Are we there yet?" he called out in a tone of mock cheerfulness, his voice breaking the peaceful quiet of the mountainside.

A few paces ahead of him on the rock-strewn trail, Sam raised his hand to the side at head height and showed him a different kind of bird.

"Sammy, that's rude," he replied, changing his voice to mock injury.

"If you'd looked at the damn map, you'd know how far it was," Sam retorted without turning around. "I told you this morning it was a three-hour hike in. It's only been two hours."

Dean bit off the truly sarcastic reply he wanted to make and said instead, "If you let me see the map once in a while, I wouldn't have to ask how far it is."

When Sam came to a dead stop, Dean had to put his hands up to keep from slamming into his broad back. "Whoa," he said. "You don't come equipped with brake lights, you know."

"Here's your damn map," Sam said, fishing in his backpack before slapping a torn and folded sheet into Dean's hand and walking off again.

Dean watched him go with a raised eyebrow. He opened his mouth to ask something about pissing and cornflakes, but he'd watched Sam eat a stack of whole-wheat pancakes for breakfast (without melted butter or whipped cream, and where was the fun in that?), and it didn't seem wise to do anything else to tick him off at the moment.

It would be a lot easier if he knew what had set the boy off in the first place. But Sam had been grumpy all day, actually back to last night when he'd read that stupid story about the Basque brothers after Dean had told him not to. Really, Dean was the one who should be pissy, given that Sam had completely dodged his question last night about not salting and burning Dean's corpse.

Not that it hadn't turned out to be the right choice, given Castiel's grabby hands. But Sam hardly could have known that at the time, and it could have been a serious mistake. Of course, Dean's spirit hadn't been likely to be wandering around topside; he'd been firmly shackled in place, a thought which he quickly shied away from. But something else could have gotten into his skin, and…damn it, Sam should have known better.

Tucking the map away without looking at it, he trudged after his brother, almost out of sight around a bend in the trail. It _was_ kinda pretty up here, nothing put pine trees rising above them with a relatively clear forest floor on all sides and sweetly-scented needles that swished underfoot. They were obviously second-growth trees, none wider than Dean's waist, but that didn't mean they didn't smell good. Occasionally, the trees would clear out and they'd come across a view that L.L. Bean-wearing yuppies would probably kill to have ready access to. But given how many miles they were off the interstate, combined with the fact that they were gaining about a thousand feet of altitude with every mile they tramped, they hadn't seen another soul on the journey.

And that was the way Dean liked it. Especially considering the two of them were carrying an arsenal that wasn't exactly suited for deer hunting.

After a few more minutes passed, there was a fork in the trail, and he pulled the map out to take a look. Sam had plowed ahead to the left without stopping, and it took Dean a moment of studying the green-and-brown lines of the topographic map to decide that he was headed the wrong way. "Hey, Sam!" he called out.

Sam halted in mid-stride and turned around. "You bellowed?" he replied.

"Wrong way, man." Dean pointed down the right fork of the trail. "This'll get us closer to the site where our miner dude is."

"Not if you take the topography into account," Sam replied, crossing his arms over his chest.

"I'm just taking the big red X into account," Dean retorted. "The one you marked that's in line with the trail you're _not_ on?"

"Dean, we're going to have to scramble for about a half a mile along the remains of the landslide. That's much easier to do going uphill. So if we take this trail, we'll climb up the rock pile, do the salt-and-burn, and then keep going up to the other trail to head back."

"Oh." He looked back at the map and saw what Sam was talking about. "Huh." Which was the closest he ever got to offering an apology on the once-a-year occasions Sam was right and he was wrong.

With a roll of his eyes, Sam proceeded to—there was no other word for it—flounce off.

Dean tucked the map away again and strode forward, determined not to let those freakishly long legs get too far ahead of him. There might well be a spirit lurking around this forest, and he really didn't want to find out about it the hard way.

The bulk of another hour passed in silence. At one point, Dean shucked off his sweatshirt and stuffed it in his pack as the sun made things surprisingly warm for their season and location. Then again, he was practically doing a Stairmaster for all the climbing he was being subjected to, which explained the sweat soaking his back. But he would be damned if he asked Sammy to slow down for him, so he manned up and kept trudging uphill on ever-rockier ground.

He'd been wondering if they would have any trouble identifying the location of the landslide, but when they got there, it was pretty obvious. The foot-wide dirt path abruptly ended at a boulder half the size of the Impala, and looking ahead, Dean saw white blazes marked on the rocks in a more or less horizontal line, tracing a route ahead across the rockpile. About three hundred yards away, he could make out the regular trail resuming and curving back into the evergreens.

Sadly, they weren't headed that way.

Instead, he came to a stop next to Sam, who was shading his eyes and looking up the mountainside. The rockpile seemed to go on to the very top, or at least up to timberline. This must have been one huge landslide.

A breeze wafted past, and Dean couldn't suppress a sudden shiver as it washed over his sweaty back. He looked up to see that the sun had gone behind a cloud. Frowning, he asked, "Hey, what was the weather report for today?"

"I thought you were going to check it," Sam replied.

"Dude, you're the one who's always on the computer," Dean retorted. The clouds he could see were not the friendly white and puffy kind, but the dark grey that heralded a storm. "Oh, that's great."

Sam turned around and grimaced. "That's not snow, is it?"

"How should I know?" Dean turned back to face the rockpile, digging his sweatshirt back out of his pack. Castiel might have laid his hand on him somewhere that was usually hidden by a t-shirt, but the bottom of the puffy red scar still poked out from time to time and never failed to draw the attention of anyone nearby.

Including Sam, whose eyes had dropped to Dean's upper arm as if he couldn't help himself before looking away again up the hill. Dean yanked the fleece over his head and muttered, "Let's just do this and get it over with."

Fifteen minutes later, he was really hoping their Basque spirit didn't give them any trouble, because stable footing was really in short supply. The rocks themselves were pretty secure; the slide had occurred over a hundred years ago, and even with a few minor shifts since then, they were pretty well in place. The problem was the completely uneven surface, the lack of flat ground to put a foot on at a normal angle, and the impossibility of keeping a salt circle intact on this uneven surface.

Dean sighed and hopped over to another boulder, wobbling a little with the unexpected weight of the crossbow and backpack he was carrying. They were gonna be lucky to get out of here with both of their ankles intact.

"It should be just up ahead," Sam called from behind him. The younger Winchester had actually fallen behind, his usual agility somewhat limited by the huge knapsack on his back. The shotgun in his hand prevented him from having both hands free to grasp rocks, but when Dean had offered to take it, he'd gotten a look that made him hold his hands up and back off.

He was going to be so glad to get back to the motel.

After a few more minutes, Dean pulled the map out of his pocket and squinted at it. "What are we looking for?" he called down to Sam.

"When we're right in line with the top of the peak across the valley, we should stop climbing," Sam replied, his head down as he scanned the pile looking for his next move.

Dean looked down at the map and noted the neat pencil line from the red X to a feature labeled in brown ink. He squinted at the writing, tucked away in a fold of the map. "Hey, does that say Elk Butt?"

"Elk _Butte_, you ass," came the disgruntled response.

"Whatever," he muttered in reply. He rotated around and looked off into the distance, unhappy to see that the dark grey clouds were growing closer. One of them pulsed slightly, confusing him until he realized it was lightning. _Oh, great. Peachy._ "Sammy, when you say 'in line', does that mean according to a normal person or to one with legs like stilts?"

"I didn't triangulate for our difference in height, if that's what you're asking." Sam hurled himself from one rock to another, coming to a skittering stop on the next boulder over from where Dean stood. "What do you think?"

He shrugged. "Seems level to me. Let's start looking for some bones."

They found a relatively large and flat rock about the size of the Impala's hood to lay their weapons and packs down on. Sam kept the shotgun in one hand while Dean fished out the salt canister to carry with him. As they moved around searching for anything bone-like protruding from the hillside, Dean constantly re-calculated the distance back to that rock in case anything suddenly appeared that needed more than a shot or a sprinkle.

After about ten minutes, Sam gave a shout, and Dean's head shot up. The younger man was about fifty feet away, where the edge of the landslide blended into the trees, his attention focused on something on the ground. "I think I got it," he called.

Dean picked his way over, nearly dropping the salt when his foot slipped on a gravelly patch. Sam was standing next to a boulder that came up to his waist, dark granite with a few pink stripes scattered throughout. As Dean watched, Sam tentatively pushed the boulder, and it wobbled back and forth in place. "Looks like this came loose recently."

"Yeah," Dean agreed, casting a nervous glance uphill at the many larger rocks above them that could still fall prey to gravity. He came up next to Sam and looked down at where the boulder used to be.

A scrap of rusted metal was poking up from the ground, next to what could have been a long, thin white rock, but was probably what they were looking for. He exchanged a glance with Sam, and then the two of them were scrambling down into the depression left behind by the shifting boulder.

It took only a few seconds to determine that yes, these were human bones, and yes, all of the major ones appeared to be here. Dean sat back on his heels and looked around him. "Poor bastard almost made it," he said, nodding towards the forest floor just beyond Sam that was empty of rocks. It looked like Miguel had been within ten feet of safety when he bit it.

"Yeah," Sam agreed, straightening to his feet. "I'm gonna get the packs."

"Sure." Dean rose as well, head swiveling around now that they were getting near to the good part. Someday he wanted someone to explain to him how a spirit knew when you were about to torch its bones. All he knew right now was that way too many times, this was when things started to get interesting.

A gust of wind shot up the mountainside, and Dean shivered. Then a rumble of thunder caught his ear, and he turned to see the clouds closing in.

A few yards away in the middle of the rockpile, Sam looked up, a worried expression on his face. "Maybe we should come back tomorrow and take care of this," he called.

"Are you kidding?" Dean turned to face him. "What are you talking about?"

"It's just…it's not a good idea to be exposed like this with a thunderstorm coming on," Sam said, his eyes skittering away.

Dean let out a huff of breath. "Dude, I am not spending another six hours walking out here and back tomorrow. It's not my fault you're taller than some of the trees around here." That got the bitchface he expected, and he went on, "You read the ritual, I salt and burn, we walk back, hopefully not in the driving rain."

"Or snow," Sam said, as if he just had to get the last word in.

"Right, 'cause that would totally make my day," he replied in his driest, most sarcastic tone. "Can we get on with it? You were the one who was so eager to get here, you were practically running up the hill."

"Sorry if I went too fast for your little legs," Sam retorted, a glimmer of good humor under the sharp jibe.

Dean pressed his lips together. That was the closest to a good mood his brother had been all day, and as much as the insult stung, he could take it if it meant that Sam stopped pouting. Instead he called out, "You gotta read something before I can put down the salt, right?"

"Yeah," Sam answered as he scooped up their packs and weapons. "You got that stone handy, right?"

"Yeah, I got a rock in my pocket," Dean replied, feeling the outline of Rose's fossil in his front pocket. "Just hurry it up." He continued to rotate in place, salt canister gripped tightly in one hand, eyes flickering in all directions. Another cold breeze brushed across his neck, and he looked up at the clouds again.

Then he froze. The breeze hadn't come from the approaching storm. It had come from the trees behind him.

He whirled to see an apparition standing next to the closest cedar tree, definitely transparent but thickening by the minute. "Sa-am!" he called.

The hasty "Shit!" a second later told him Sam had seen it as well. "I've got you covered," came the reassuring reply, and Dean could picture his little brother standing up on a boulder with his shotgun aimed at the spirit, looking like some kind of mountain man. The spirit looked the part, too, in patched pants and a torn flannel shirt, his features unmistakably those of the image of Miguel Etxbarri that they had seen at the historical society.

No one moved for a few seconds. Then the ghost glided closer, and as Dean took a step back, he saw that it was carrying something. "Hey Sam, spirits can't normally do that, can they?" he asked, pointing at the solid object in its hands. It looked like a wide, shallow pan.

"Huh," came from behind him, closer than before. He heard Sam's foot scrape on a rock above him. "Maybe it's that unburned and unburied thing."

"You mean he's immortal?" Dean asked incredulously.

"Well, most spirits are, right? In a manner of speaking." There was a rustle and two thumps to his right, and then Sam was standing at his side, shotgun still leveled at Etxbarri. "Here, take this," he said, nodding towards the weapon.

Grabbing it with one hand, Dean kept the aim steady. "How long does this ritual take?"

Sam had dropped his pack onto the ground and was rifling through it. "At least ten minutes, assuming I pronounce everything right. And once I start, I can't stop to say anything else, or I have to start over." He pulled out the lighter fluid and set it on the ground.

"Right." Dean cast a quick glance to the sky and back to the miner, who was still standing there and watching them. "So it'll pretty much be a race between you and the storm, then."

"I'll read fast," Sam muttered, fishing a couple of sheets of paper out of his bag and zipping it closed. "Gimme the salt."

He handed it over, glad to have both hands on the gun. "Hit it," he said.

The first few sentences—at least Dean assumed that was what the pauses between the garbled sounds indicated—had little effect. Etxbarri continued to watch them, walking slowly back and forth, Dean tracking him with the shotgun as Sam paused to squirt lighter fluid onto the exposed bones. It was when Sam shook the first dose of salt onto the bones that things started to happen.

The apparition seemed to grow, shifting from the size of a man shorter than either of the Winchesters to someone Sam's height. Sam cast a nervous glance in Dean's direction but kept reading, the unfamiliar consonants tripping off his tongue less smoothly than Latin ever did.

Lightning flashed overhead, and it was twenty seconds before the answering rumble of thunder rolled by. "Four miles away, Sam," Dean pointed out, not willing to take his eyes off the spirit.

He sensed an annoyed look for his trouble. Another series of incomprehensible sounds followed, then another shake of the canister.

And Etxbarri grew another foot in height, tossing down the metal pan he'd been carrying and taking a menacing step forward.

"Okay, that does it." Dean adjusted his aim upward slightly, pulled the trigger, and salt went flying. The miner wavered for a moment before disappearing.

He let out a breath. That should buy them some time.

Sam was digging in his pocket for the matches, which Dean grabbed from him as soon as he had it out. "Don't want you setting anything else on fire but the bones," he said, tapping the notebook paper with the Euskara words scrawled out in Sam's hand. Sam rolled his eyes but continued to read as Dean squirted a healthy dose of lighter fluid into the depression below them.

Dean waited until he got a nod, then lit a match and held it over the bones.

A gust of wind promptly blew it out.

He looked up sharply, but it was the storm, not the spirit. "Let's try that again," he said, lighting another match and promptly dropping it into the shallow grave at their feet. If he remembered Sam's explanation from the night before, this was the halfway point.

A dry leaf caught, then another, and then a bone. "Sweet," Dean said, stuffing the matches away and returning his attention to their surroundings.

The sky flickered again, and he saw Sam cast a nervous glance upwards before flipping to the second piece of paper and reading both faster and louder. He sprinkled salt for a third time over the flickering flames.

And then he went sprawling on his side, the pages flying out of his hands.

"Damn it!" Dean raised the shotgun, but didn't see a thing. "You okay?"

When he didn't get a response, he turned around, heart in his throat. Sam was picking himself up off the rocky ground, favoring his left shoulder. Lips pressed tightly together, he gave Dean a short nod and scrambled for the sheets of notebook paper before the wind could carry them away.

A rustling sound came from Dean's right, and he whirled to see a faint trace of vapor swirling above the burning remains. Without bothering to wait for confirmation, he sent off another round of salt with a hard pull of the trigger, and the vapor disappeared. "Let's step it up, Sam!" he barked as he reloaded, cursing yet again that there was no way to draw a salt line around themselves on the pile of rocks.

Sam lurched forward, crumpled paper in his hands. He smoothed out the sheets against his thigh and then started to read again. After a moment, he nodded urgently at Dean, pointing to his left pocket.

"Ah, damn it." The ritual required the fire to be lit multiple times, and if he'd remembered that, he could have been ready with the matches instead of having to lower the shotgun, dig them out, fold back the cover, strike a match, and drop it on the already-burning fire before stepping back and looking around.

As it turns out, that was more than enough time for Etxbarri to re-form and be standing right in his face.

Dean yelped and darted back, raising the shotgun. But the miner held out a hand, and in an all-too-familiar move, Dean went flying backwards, slamming into the same waist-high boulder that had been covering Etxbarri's bones, his weapon falling to the ground.

"Son of a bitch!" he exclaimed as he bent over to grab the gun, his legs and lower back instantly aching from hitting the rock. "So much for a fossil warding off evil spirits," he muttered.

Sam's words were growing louder as he dug in his pocket for the fossil he'd been carrying. When they planned this out, Dean had been reluctant to let Sam use his rock as part of the ritual, but now it was pretty clear that it didn't provide direct protection to an individual, he didn't mind so much. Sam held the fossil over the fire and called, "_Emaiquzu biziko ta hileko argia_!" Then he dropped the rock and took a step back.

From what Dean remembered, there was a pause here before a few final words and one last match. He held up the shotgun with one hand and dug for the matches again, waiting for Sam's signal.

And then a brilliant flash of lightning strobed across their vision in concert with a clap of thunder that was loud enough to be God's voice cracking the sky.

Dean turned to make some snarky comment about how nice it was that Mother Nature was providing an appropriate setting for their activities, when he saw Sam. He froze.

His brother was staring upwards, arms held out from his sides, back slightly arched, jaw open and fear on his face like Dean had only seen a couple of times in his life. For one heart-stopping moment, he thought Sam had been hit by lightning, but he quickly realized that if that were the case, he'd be sprawled out on the ground, not standing upright as though someone had him on a set of strings. "Dude, you okay?" he shouted over a second roll of thunder.

He felt a cold breath on his back and was already lifting the shotgun as he turned around. Etxbarri was right behind him, both hands raised this time and anger wreathing his ghostly face. "Sam, get on with it!" Dean screamed, finger on the trigger, knowing he was too slow even as he fired the weapon.

There was no response from behind him. And in the next second, as the ghost sent him flying backwards again, this time not just his lower body but his head contacting the sharp edge of a fallen boulder, the last thing he saw before darkness slid over him was Sam frozen in place, gaze fixed on the skies, and not doing a damn thing to get rid of the ghost.

oooooooooooooo

Well, whaddya know, we've got simultaneous cliffhangers going in the present and the past. How about that…


	9. Chapter 9: A Heart That Beats

Keep in mind that not only is this story set right after 4.08, but this part was written before 4.09 (IKWYDLS) aired--because this is where the train starts to go off the tracks into AU Land. If you interpret events generously, I think it still fits into canon. At least I hope so…let me know what you think!

oooooooooooooo

Well the heart that hurts  
Is a heart that beats  
Can you hear the drummer slowing?  
--U2, "One Step Closer"

oooooooooooooo

_Why am I so stupid?_ Sam berated himself. _Why did I have to tell them they had nothing on me when Dean's here to be tortured in my place?_

Not that they had "nothing" on him, exactly: the knife at his throat was the same one that had earlier sliced his forearm, and even though it was barely touching his skin, Sam could feel that it was honed to a fine, sharp edge. The grip on his hair was firm and the hand holding the knife was steady, and it occurred to him that this was not the first time these men had interrogated humans. You couldn't get so close to a demon or a spirit without putting yourself in danger, no matter how many charms or sigils you used, so they couldn't have gotten their experience that way. These guys knew what they were doing, and the fear that had been burning through Sam's veins all night flared a little bit brighter.

He couldn't tell them what they wanted to know. He couldn't admit what he'd tried to do in order to bring Dean back: not to his brother and certainly not to these hunters. One quick motion with that knife was all it would take to slit his throat, and he had no doubt that they'd do it once they heard what he had to say.

Of course, by that point, Dean would probably never want to speak to him again either, so maybe his life might as well be over.

His internal battle was cut short as Harry hauled on the rope, straining against Dean's weight but still managing to lift him up so that Dean had to stretch himself as tall as he could, rising on to his toes to try and keep his weight off the rope. But one more tug from the lanky young man would send Dean swinging.

And then Harry wrapped the slack rope around his hands and gave a sharp pull.

"All right!"

Sam's shout rang out in the building, and the room suddenly went still. Dean let out a strangled croak, and Harry instantly let go of the rope, sending Dean crashing into a pile on the floor. Sam had to fight his automatic response of lunging forward, cursing yet again at the sharp blade against his neck.

"All right, what?" came Tom's menacing response.

Sam flicked his eyes downward meaningfully. Tom nodded grudgingly, and the knife was removed from his throat. He hastily looked over at Dean, who was doggedly struggling to sit upright, pushing himself up with his bound hands and tilting his head back as he sucked in air. Sam let his eyes linger over him for a moment, aware that what he was about to say might change everything between them.

Not that he had much of a choice.

"I tried to make a deal," he said steadily. "That's what you wanted to know, right?"

Tom lowered himself back into the extra chair facing Sam. "Go on," he drawled.

Licking his parched lips, Sam lowered his eyes to the ground. "I summoned a crossroads demon. Two weeks after…" _After I buried my brother_. He still couldn't say it aloud, even all these months later.

"Sam, no," Dean rasped out.

Sam briefly looked over at him, not sure if Dean was objecting to what he was hearing or the fact that Sam was saying anything at all. He gave a tiny, apologetic shrug and went on, "It wasn't one I'd met before, but she knew who I was."

"So what'd you offer?" asked Joe from behind him. "The usual?"

_The usual_. Sam couldn't help the twitch of his lips. Would that be the offer that his father and brother had made, or the one that his mother had? _God, we _are_ a messed-up family._ "No," he said. "I'd already tried that, and it didn't work."

"They didn't want a soul like yours?" came the reply, one hand grabbing the back of his head by the hair.

Sam grunted, afraid the knife was coming back. On the floor, Dean started to rise, but Harry grabbed the rope that was still around his neck and yanked it, sending him off balance and collapsing back down.

"Damn it, lay off!" Sam called out angrily. Then, figuring the best thing he could do for Dean was to go on with his explanation, he said, "No, it wasn't enough." He grimaced, remembering what had happened the previous night, the outright refusal to deal from the demon in the business suit who'd told Sam they had everything exactly how they wanted it. After Ruby's unexpected defection to his side and him kicking her out of the car when she told him she couldn't help, he'd decided to give it one more shot.

"God, Sam, what did you do?"

The raspy question from Dean hurt his ears, but he had to answer it. He licked his lips again and looked down at the blood-spattered floor at his feet. "I made her another offer."

"C'mon, get on with it." Tom's voice was shading towards menacing.

Sam took a deep breath and opened his mouth. Then he closed it again, shaking his head. He'd sworn he would never tell a soul what he had offered up to the petite blonde demon who laughed at him underneath the bright moonlight at an Indiana crossroads. He sure as hell wasn't going to tell Dean what he'd been willing to do. His brother would never speak to him again.

"Harry." Tom's voice broke the silence, and he gestured with a thumb towards Dean, who'd managed to make it to his knees.

A second later, Harry had pulled hard on the rope in his hands, and Dean's eyes bulged as he scrambled to his feet to try and reduce the pressure around his neck. But as Sam watched in horror, Harry pulled the rope tighter, until Dean was being lifted off the ground.

"Stop!" Sam shouted frantically. "Stop, damn it!"

Dean struggled for air for a second longer until the rope slackened, though not enough to send him to the ground again. He was stuck there with the noose around his neck, swaying on his feet, his eyes locked on Sam with a desperate plea in them. And if Sam knew his brother, it was a plea for him to keep his mouth shut.

_I'm sorry_, Sam said with his eyes. Then he looked away, fixing his gaze on the worn boards of the wall of the barn. There was no way he could say this while looking at Dean. He would simply come undone.

"When I was six months old," he began, "the yellow-eyed demon came to me." He distantly heard Dean try to tell him to stop, but he plunged on. "He did something so that when I turned twenty-two, I started to have visions." This was nothing the hunters wouldn't already know, and he really didn't want to talk about the blood dripping into his infant mouth. "There were a bunch of us, I later found out, all marked the same way." Sam swallowed. "We, uh, we were brought to this ghost town and told we had to fight it out amongst ourselves."

"Go on," the older man drawled, the light in his eyes not exactly reassuring.

Sam's gaze shifted back to the wall, feeling Dean's eyes boring into him from the side. "Whoever won was supposed to be the leader of an army, a human who had the power to command demons." He took one more breath, living his last moments before rocking the world on its axis for his brother. Then he went on. "I thought that even if the yellow-eyed demon was gone, there might still be an army to lead."

Maybe he wouldn't have to come out and say it. Maybe they could all connect the dots themselves.

"Go on," came the repeated command more insistently.

Sam closed his eyes. _So much for wishful thinking_. "So that was my offer."

There was dead silence. Sam waited behind the darkness of his eyelids, unable to face anyone in the room, least of all the person who meant most to him in the world.

Then Dean broke the silence like the shattering of glass. "You did _what_?" The voice was barely recognizable as his, not only from the hoarseness brought on by his near-strangulation, but the cold mixture of fury and disbelief that was pretty much exactly how Sam had heard it in his head whenever he'd toyed with the idea of telling Dean the truth.

"Let me get this straight, boy." Tom leaned forward, forearms on his thighs, his voice deceptively calm. "You told a demon that you would lead a freakin' _army_ of their kind? You would turn your back on the human race and lead them against us?"

"I didn't mean it." Sam winced even as he spoke the words, knowing how stupid they would sound.

Sure enough, Dean pounced. "You didn't _mean_ it? What the hell, Sam? How can that possibly make a frickin' bit of difference? Demons don't care what you mean, they care what you say. And you said you'd—" He stopped abruptly, apparently unable to repeat Sam's words.

Sam finally opened his eyes and faced his brother. "I didn't say how long I would lead them for, I didn't say what I would do, I didn't say anything like that. It would have been perfectly within the bounds of agreement to lead them around in circles and right back down into Hell."

"You do know you never actually made it into law school, right, Sam?" The words were cutting, but Dean wasn't exactly trying to spare his feelings. "You can't make a deal like that and expect it to stick. You didn't think she could see right through your little offer and twist it around however she wanted? What the hell were you thinking?"

"I was thinking about you!" Sam exploded. "I was thinking about what she was telling me they were doing to you. What they'd already done and what they were planning next and how many years it was going to take and how it was never, ever, _ever_ going to stop. I was thinking about you, Dean." The last was said nearly in a whisper, his eyes locked on his brother's as if they were the only two people in the room, as if their lives weren't hanging in the balance.

The voice in front of him soon shattered that illusion. "So when does it start?"

Sam tore his gaze away. "What?"

"When does it start? The invasion?"

He stared at Tom for a moment uncomprehendingly until it kicked in, and he shook his head. "There is no invasion."

Suddenly his head was yanked back and the knife was at his throat again. Sam felt his breath speed up and heard Dean trying to yell off on the side, but his attention was overwhelmingly taken up by the sharp bite of metal just over his jugular. A fraction of an inch closer, and his lifeblood would spill all over the floor.

"There's no invasion," he ground out past his clenched jaw. "She wouldn't make the deal."

For a moment, the only thing Sam could hear was his own quick breathing whistling through his clenched teeth. Then the knife moved away and his head was shoved forward. "The hell you talking about?" the man behind him barked. "Your brother's alive, isn't he?"

"Not because of me," Sam muttered, feeling shame and helplessness spreading through him as quickly as the line of blood trickling down towards his collarbone.

"Wait a minute here." The slow cadence of Tom's voice was almost like Bobby's, and Sam's head shot up at the sound. "You offered your services as a leader of demons to an actual demon, she turned you down, and yet your brother is still standing here?" When Sam nodded, he went on, "Then what else did you offer?"

Sam shook his head, tensing as he anticipated another threat to himself or his brother. "There was nothing else _to_ offer," he said bitterly.

"Come on, if you were willing to trade your abilities for your brother's life, surely you could have offered something else."

Sam couldn't help the snort that escaped him. "You've got it wrong," he said.

"Excuse me?" The tone was definitely more menacing now.

"The offer," Sam replied. "It wasn't to bring Dean back to life." He looked over at his brother, swallowing hard at the shattered look on his face that said he'd probably completely destroyed the other man's view of him and their relationship in the balance. But if he could do one thing here, he had to try and at least get him to understand this, the lengths Sam was willing to go to in order to save him. He licked his lips and went on, "I couldn't get that much out of them. It was only to get him out of Hell."

Dean sucked in a sharp breath, his eyes widening. "Sammy," he said so quietly it was almost inaudible, his tone one of disbelief.

Sam felt moisture prickling his eyes, and he furiously blinked it away. Did Dean really not understand what he meant to him or what it had done to Sam to know the torments Dean was suffering on his behalf?

But then as he watched, the disbelief on his brother's face slowly changed to something like anger. "That was stupid, Sam," he rasped. "Really dumb move."

He blinked at Dean, dumbfounded. Before he could say anything, Tom spoke up, looking at Dean as he said, "Seems like we agree on something, boy." Then after a moment, he turned back to Sam. "So your deal failed. What else did you do?"

"I told you, nothing," Sam sullenly replied. He could feel the waves of anger coming off of his brother. _Damn it, Dean_, he thought. _Why do you think you're so unworthy? Why do you think I could just leave you there to rot for eternity?_

"Harry," Tom called out.

"Stop it!" Sam shouted, desperate to avert another round with the noose. "Damn it, I'm telling the truth! You don't need to hurt him any more."

"You're lying, boy," Tom snapped. "You want to know how I know?" Without waiting for an answer, he went on, "You know how the FBI pays attention to what people buy, makes a note in a file somewhere if there's a little too much fertilizer that comes off the shelves at one time, stuff like that?" He folded his arms across the back of the chair. "I got a friend who's like that. Makes it his business to track unusual sorts of purchases among the hunting community. Like, say, the amount of angelica most hunters might burn through in a couple of years being bought up all at once."

"So, what, there's no Costco for hunters?" Dean interjected, and Sam felt a flicker of relief at the familiar sarcastic tone. "No buying in bulk?"

"You know better than that, you idiot." It was Joe, shooting him a dark look before looming over Sam again. "Supplies don't keep forever. And since we know you don't need angelica to perform an exorcism," he said to Sam while nodding towards the dark stain on the floor, "you must have needed it for something else."

"What makes you think it was me?" Sam asked in a level voice, schooling his features into as blank a façade as he could manage. He clearly remembered making those purchases, buying out three different apothecaries over the course of a 500-mile drive to spread out the purchases and to obtain the large quantities he needed of some unusual items.

It had been the day before the Fourth of July, and he'd never felt less like celebrating a holiday in his entire life.

"Security camera at one store, descriptions at the other." Tom glared at him. "Then there was the consecrated silver-and-gold chalice stolen from a church two days earlier along that same route. A man can go to Hell for stealing from a church, you know."

Sam swallowed. He'd meant to return that once he had determined he didn't need it, but now he remembered that it was still buried in the trunk of the Impala. "Sounds like a lot of circumstantial evidence," he said, injecting more confidence into his voice than he really felt. "What exactly are you accusing me of?"

"This isn't a trial, boy," Joe retorted, holding his knife up in front of Sam's face as if to show him his own blood staining the blade. "You've already been convicted by a jury of your peers. But we need to know exactly how far you went."

"Convicted of what?" Dean demanded hoarsely.

"The chalice wasn't the only thing my friend heard about that went missing," Tom replied. "Right about the same time, one of the few complete copies of the Book of Eibon disappeared from a library in Baltimore."

Dean scoffed. "That doesn't even exist. H.P. Lovecraft made it up."

Sam didn't have time to wonder how his brother knew that, because Harry responded almost gleefully from his position at the wall, "That's what you think."

"Sam?" Dean asked, and the urgency of his tone said he was asking about more than the fictional status of a book of black magic.

It took more strength than Sam ever thought it could possibly take to raise his head and face his brother. "It's real," he said quietly.

Dean looked back at him, all of the fear that had been on his face after Sam's eviction of the demon shining through in his wide-open eyes and the grim set of his jaw. "What are you saying?" he whispered.

He looked back at Dean, willing him to hear him out before jumping to judgment. The hell with everyone else in the room—they had already made up their minds. All that mattered at this point was his brother.

"It's a real book," he began quietly. "It contains instructions for raising someone from the dead, bringing them back from Hell. Not as a revenant, but actually bringing them back to life." Sam licked his lips and went on, "It involves opening a Devil's Gate and summoning the one person you want while keeping every demon at bay. It's not easy, but it can be done."

Dean flinched, and Sam could see the doubt creeping into his face—doubt of Sam and what he was capable of.

And for the first time in his life, Sam _knew_ his brother was afraid of him.

"I didn't use it," Sam added quickly, wanting to erase that look from Dean's face. "I swear, I didn't."

"Then what did you get it for?" Dean asked, his voice scraping over his abused throat.

"I was desperate," he answered, leaning forward in the chair until the ropes held him back. "I obviously wasn't going to be able to make a deal, and I…I had to do something."

Two months of attempted demon-killing had only gone so far to assuage his guilt and sorrow, and Ruby had been right when she said she was going to be of no help getting him what he really wanted. Bobby had tried to watch his back for a while, until Sam had realized that he wasn't going to be able to get done what he needed to with the older man watching over his shoulder, and so he'd deliberately drifted away from him.

It was probably a good thing, too; Bobby might not have retained the same conviction Dean did that the younger Winchester wasn't going to go dark side at some point, given some of the things he was planning. Bobby might well have decided to carry out John's final wish.

Sam had no idea what would have happened then.

So he'd struck out on his own, not wanting Bobby or Ruby or anyone else to talk him out of it. He _knew_ he could do it with some time and some very careful preparations. And up until the end, he'd been sure he could do it.

"Then what were ya doing in Wyoming?" Tom snarled. "With the book in hand and all those things you'd been stealing?"

Sam swallowed hard, remembering the hot July evening when he'd been back at the graveyard where he'd last seen his father and the yellow-eyed demon, ready to do something the former would have been horrified by and the latter would have watched with glee. He drew in a deep breath and went on, "I gathered everything I needed, but then I didn't go through with it."

"Lost your nerve?" Joe asked abruptly.

Sam grimaced, thinking of Ruby's sudden appearance in the graveyard and her graphic description of how if he was lucky, he'd blow himself up casting the spell—but if he was unlucky, things could get worse than he could possibly imagine. "I guess you could say that," he replied, not taking his eyes off his brother.

Damn it, but he'd never wanted to have this conversation, much less with three armed men listening to every word they said. He figured he was pretty much screwed at this point; given what they'd seen him do and heard him say, they weren't likely to let him go. But if he could get across to them that Dean had nothing to do with anything Sam might have done, or tried to do, then maybe at least his brother could get away.

Dean was scrutinizing his face, trying to read his expression. His eyes flickered to the two men standing guard behind Sam, then back to his face. _Ruby?_ he mouthed.

Sam gave a tiny nod. Dean dropped his eyes to the ground, and Sam bit his lip. He could read Dean's expression as clearly as if he had spoken: _Never thought I'd be grateful to that demon bitch for anything._

_If you only knew, Dean_, he thought.

"Where's the book?" Tom demanded.

"I burned it," Sam said, dragging his gaze away from his brother to focus on the older hunter.

"You did what?" Tom shot to his feet. "Do you have any idea how dangerous—"

"I did it the right way, okay? I know you can't just set a match to it," Sam snapped back. Bobby had told him what to do when Sam had explained that the book had happened to fall into his hands. He knew the older hunter hadn't believed the story of happenstance for a second, but since it was clear that the book hadn't actually been used, there was no harm done. "It's gone. That's all you need to know."

"That's all we need to know, huh?" Joe demanded, grabbing the top of Sam's head one more time and baring his throat. "Let us be the judge of that."

"I think he's right, Joe." Tom's voice was final, judgmental. "I think we've heard all we need to."

There was a horrible pause while Sam waited for Joe to bring the knife up to his throat and slice across it. He closed his eyes, not willing to let anyone else in the barn see the fear that must be shining through them. _ Just do it already_, he thought, his mind casting back to a dingy motel room and a newly-risen Ruby holding her knife to his jaw. He'd been ready then, and he was ready now.

Because to some extent, he knew that he deserved this. He _was_ a traitor of sorts—not entirely human, willing to use these demon-given powers of his when an emissary of God Himself had told him not to, willing to make horrible deals with the devil and damn the consequences. Maybe John Winchester's worst fears had already come true, not in an explosion of black-eyed violence, but more subtly, through the choices he'd made and the things he'd been willing to do. Maybe it was better for everyone if the man behind him sliced his throat and it was all over. At least he wouldn't have to fight temptation anymore, wouldn't have to worry about damning his own soul by doing what he thought was saving others.

At least Dean wouldn't have to worry about him going dark side anymore.

Suddenly, Joe let go of his hair and shoved his head forward before moving around to stand in front of him. Instead of cutting his throat, the sharp knife sliced through the ropes around his ankles, nicking his skin in the process and making him twitch away in reflex. When the ropes across his chest were cut as well, he didn't have time to flex his stiff muscles before a hand on his shoulder shoved him forward. Sam stumbled onto his knees, cursing his stiff legs for keeping him from springing to his feet as he wondered why he had been cut loose.

It wasn't until he felt the gun muzzle at the back of his head that he understood.

This was to be his execution.

oooooooooooooo

Have I mentioned that I like cliffhangers? (puts up protective shield)


	10. Chapter 10: In the Day

Now before you come after me with pitchforks and torches, I promise that this is the last flashback chapter. It's all present-day after this one. Also, here's a reminder that this story is rated T, in large part for language.

oooooooooooooo

What you fear in the night  
In the day comes to call anyway  
--Counting Crows, "Einstein on the Beach"

oooooooooooooo

**Earlier that day **

Thinking back later on that moment on an Idaho mountainside, Sam could never understand how if two tremendous booms of thunder hadn't drawn his panicked gaze away from the lightning flashing overhead, the comparatively quiet crack of his brother's head contacting a rock could catch his attention.

But it did.

He whirled around, eyes widening, Dean's name springing to his lips. He caught himself just in time, knowing they would be lucky to finish the ritual as it was, much less go back and repeat the last ten minutes if he screwed up. Scratch that: he'd obviously already screwed up, given that Dean was sprawled face-down and unconscious.

Casting a quick glance around to make sure the spirit had dissipated, Sam crouched down by his brother and did the all-too-familiar check for pulse and breathing. Both were steady, and he carefully pressed aside Dean's short hair to examine the source of the blood steadily dripping down the back of his head.

The gash was short and shallow, right over an uneven lump in Dean's skull that had Sam searching his memory for the source of that particular scar when he remembered—his brother no longer had any scars. Shaking his head, Sam reached for the water bottle holstered in his pack and carefully poured the cold liquid over the wound. Dean stirred and moaned slightly, but not enough to indicate he had come to.

Another sharp crack of lightning froze Sam in place, crouched over his brother and waiting to feel the sharp jolt of electricity striking him dead. When nothing happened—again—he lifted his head up and looked at the clouds roiling overhead. The rain wasn't falling yet, but it was sure to start any second. And if the fire on the bones went out, they were in serious trouble.

Sam shook his head to clear it. Enough of this freaking out over the lightning, he sternly told himself. Dean was already hurt because of him, and now he had to finish it before anything else went wrong. He carefully arranged Dean so his forehead was resting on his arms, moving him as minimally as he could while managing to get his face up off the ground.

The sudden rush of cold air on the back of his neck as he slowly straightened was not from the storm.

He wheeled around so fast that his legs got tangled and he thumped hard onto his ass. Miguel Etxberri stood directly over him, glowering in the fading light, looking like he was at least seven feet tall from Sam's vantage point. Sam looked around wildly, but the shotgun was at least five feet away. Then he remembered the salt canister he'd been holding as he stood over the bones, and he silently cursed at himself as he realized it was still clutched in his hand.

He slung the canister towards the spirit, a stream of white crystals spraying out over the ghostly figure. The miner growled low in his throat before disappearing again. Sam scrambled to his feet and back to the gravesite, silently giving thanks that the fire was still going. He dug the crumpled paper back out of his pocket, raced through the last remaining words, and gave a final shake of the salt canister.

Thunder rolled overhead at the same time as the crack of the lightning. Sam's head shot up to see Miguel Etxberri appear one last time, standing over his own remains, no taller than he would have been in real life, giving Sam a final glower before fading into nothing.

Sam stood there panting for a moment. A rain drop plunked onto the back of his neck, and then another. At his feet, the still-burning bones sizzled as the water hit them. He looked up at the sky nervously, hoping the rain would hold off until the spirit's remains were well and truly burned. On the other hand, if Etxberri had made his farewell appearance, then they were probably good to go.

That was, assuming they _could_ go anywhere. Sam took two steps back to where Dean was and knelt down next to him. "Dean, can you hear me?" he asked, reaching out to touch the fresh gash in his brother's skull.

"Ow." A hand came up to swat him away. "Is he gone or are you screwing things up by talking?" Dean muttered into the ground.

Sam bit his lip. _No, I screwed things up enough already._ "Yeah, he's gone. Can you get up?"

"Give me a hand," Dean demanded, and Sam was happy to oblige. He helped his brother stagger to his feet, Dean briefly pressing a hand to the back of his head before hissing and pulling it away. "You think maybe some time we could deal with a ghost someplace softer?"

"What, like a pillow factory?" Sam retorted.

"Shut up." Dean shook off Sam's arm and straightened up, carefully rolling his head from one side to another. "Yep, still attached."

"Any double vision?" Sam asked. The rain was starting to fall for real now, lightning flickering overhead once more. He was proud that he kept his reaction to a flinch this time.

Dean was eyeing him closely. "No double vision, no ringing ears, no nausea," he recited. "Hell of a headache, though."

"Okay then. Let me make sure the fire's out, and then we can head back." Sam bent down to his back and started rooting through it for the other water bottle.

"How 'bout you?" Dean asked. "Your head okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," he replied, straightening up with the Nalgene water bottle in his hand and turning his back on Dean to examine the smoldering pile of salt and bones.

"So what did you see?" Dean's tone was deliberately light and curious.

Sam frowned as he turned back towards him. "What do you mean?"

Dean gestured towards his head. "When you do a world-class freak-out like that, it tends to come along with a vision. Except I thought you weren't having those anymore."

"I'm not." Sam unscrewed the cap on the water bottle and looked down. There were only a few flickering flames left, one last piece of white bone turning dark with ash. _Leave it alone, Dean, just leave it alone_.

He might as well have asked for the Impala to appear hovering in midair in front of them float them back down the mountainside. "Then what the hell was that?" Dean asked, walking around to stand on the other side of the bones.

"It was nothing," Sam replied.

"Hey, you don't get to stand there and tell me that was nothing," Dean snapped.

"I get to tell you whatever the hell I want," Sam retorted, hefting the water bottle and glancing down at the last of the burning bones, wishing Dean would go pick up the shotgun or something.

"No, you don't." Dean leaned forward and jabbed a finger into Sam's chest, the firelight casting strange shadows on his face in the growing dusk. "You haven't frozen on a hunt like that since you were sixteen and Dad chewed out your ass for a good two hours afterwards. And what are you doing with that?" he asked, nodding at the water bottle.

"I was fourteen." Sam glared back at him. "And it's fire season, so as soon as the bones are gone, I'm dousing the fire."

Dean gave him a hard look. "Listen, Smokey Bear, I know you never want to give him credit for anything, but he was right about dealing with things before they could get in the way of a hunt. Something's going on with you, man, and it got in the way."

"I said I was sorry," Sam muttered.

"That's really not good enough," Dean replied firmly.

Sam didn't answer, just kept staring at the ground, and Dean sighed. "You know how you and Dad fought so much?"

"Kinda hard to forget," he responded sullenly.

"You know how many times it was him picking the fight?"

Sam looked up at him. "What do you mean, did I keep score or something?"

"No," Dean said exasperatedly, drawing the word out into two syllables. "He didn't want either of you going into a hunt distracted. So he'd say something to provoke you, get it out in the open, so you weren't brooding over it instead of watching my back."

"I do not brood," Sam growled, looking out from under his lowered eyebrows.

Dean's own brows quirked in response, his best, _Uh, dude?_ expression on his face. After a moment, Sam lifted the corner of his mouth in a moment of self-acknowledgment. Then his expression grew serious. "I would never not have watched your back, you know that."

Dean pursed his lips as he parsed the grammar, but he gave a nod of acknowledgment before pointing up at the sky. "Then what was that?" he asked more casually.

Sam's response was to look down at the shallow grave before tossing the contents of the water bottle over the smoldering embers. Considering the way it was starting to rain, it seemed kind of stupid to be adding more water, but it was pretty dry country out here, and he didn't want to risk leaving any smoldering embers that could start a wildfire later. "Sorry," he muttered. "It won't happen again."

"Damn straight it won't. Or are we going to have to avoid hunts whenever there's a thunderstorm going on?"

Sam's head shot up, eyes meeting Dean's for a second before looking away. "What do you mean?" he asked quickly.

"Come on, Sammy, I'm not stupid. You freaked out like a girl when the lightning flashed." Dean's voice gentled as he went on, "What I want to know is why."

Sam stood strong for a moment, knowing there was no way he would be able to bluff his way out of this one. Then his shoulders slumped and he dropped the empty bottle onto the ground. "Let it go, okay? I promise it won't happen again."

"I can't do that." Dean shook his head. "I gotta know that you're with me one hundred percent and that you're not going to get distracted by something I can't predict. You know that's how it works."

Sam raised one hand and pinched the bridge of his nose. Rainwater was trickling down the back of his neck, icy cold against his flushed skin. "Can we at least get out of here before it starts pouring?"

There was a pause. Then Dean said roughly, "Yeah, sure," before stalking away. Sam could hear him gathering up their stuff, the shotgun clanking against rock as he lifted it from where it had fallen when he had been flung against the boulder by the spirit while Sam stood there like a stupid idiot.

"Dean, I'm sorry," he said, whirling around.

"Save it for later," Dean mumbled, turning away to snatch up his pack.

Sam watched for a moment, then let out a gusty sigh and bent down to pick up the water bottle. He packed it away in silence, along with the salt and the other remnants of the ritual. The _jangoikoaren harriak_ he left in place; the instructions he'd come across hadn't been clear on whether the fossilized thunderbolt had to remain with the burned bones, and at this point, he wasn't about to tempt fate.

Five minutes later, they had packed up like a pair of leave-no-trace outdoorsmen, despite their unusual gear. Salt was still scattered across the mountainside, but the falling rain would dissolve that quickly enough. Sam hunched his shoulders against the cold wind, hoping they would be under enough tree cover that the rain wouldn't soak them straight through. He was not looking forward to three hours of walking in the rain. Well, probably two hours since it was all downhill, but still.

Truth be told, he wasn't looking forward to facing Dean right now, either. So when it was clear that they were ready to go, Sam swung into the lead, long legs eating up the rocky ground alongside the remnants of the long-ago landslide, focusing every bit of his attention on finding the trail they needed to take them back to the Impala. He could hear Dean behind him, his breaths coming too fast and hard for him to be able to carry on a conversation. A grim, satisfied smile flickered across Sam's face as he pressed on.

In no time at all, however, they had reached a clear path back into the woods to their right. They turned onto the dirt trail, and since it was generally downhill, Sam figured Dean would have no trouble catching up. Sure enough, a few minutes later, he could practically feel his brother breathing down his neck.

The rain diminished once they were beneath the forest canopy, but it was still coming down. The thunder and lightning had faded away, an occasional rumble or far-off crack still breaking the silence. Sam tried to keep up a brisk pace, but now that the rocky ground was damp, it was also treacherous.

They'd gone for about forty-five minutes in silence, back past the fork in the trail and onto ground they'd already covered in the other direction, when to his dismay, Sam realized the rain was coming down harder. Not only that, but they were approaching a stretch of trail that wound along the edge of the mountainside with very little tree cover. The last thing they needed was to slide down a few thousand feet of mountain because Sam was literally running away from a conversation.

"Hey, Sam," Dean called. "Wasn't there a cave or something up ahead?"

Sam grimaced. He remembered seeing a series of overhangs just off the trail, noting their location on the hike up in the automatic way he filed away information that might be useful later. "Yeah," he shot back over his shoulder. "Why, is your carefully-styled hair getting wet?"

That got him a thwack on the shoulder. "That's your department, princess. Besides, this trail's gonna turn into a mudslide if it rains much harder."

Dean did have a point. The ground was growing softer, and he didn't relish the idea of navigating a narrow stretch of exposed mountainside in pouring rain. Maybe it would let up soon. "Okay," he grudgingly admitted.

A few minutes later, they were tucked under a granite overhang that was wide enough to get them and their packs out of the rain but not so deep that it was likely to be inhabited by other large mammals. Now that he was sitting still in a damp sweatshirt and t-shirt, Sam wondered if he should dig his spare shirt out of his pack to ease his shivering, or if it was going to continue to rain once they started walking again.

"Might clear off soon," Dean said, gesturing out at the sky. It did seem to be getting lighter out, Sam thought. Dean was already shucking off his wet clothing, pulling on a dry grey t-shirt with a rip across the right sleeve. He looked over at Sam. "Dude, you'll catch a cold."

"I'll be fine," Sam said, drawing his knees up to his chest for warmth.

"Whatever," came the reply.

Silence fell as they both sat with their backs to the granite and looked out over the valley below. Then Dean said, sounding reluctant, "Sam, you gotta tell me what's going on."

He hunched his shoulders up towards his ears as if he could make himself small enough to escape Dean's notice. "I told you, it won't happen again." He was pretty sure it wouldn't, at least, and "pretty sure" seemed to work well enough with them.

"And I told you that's not good enough." Dean paused and moved to mirror Sam's position, wrapping his arms around his drawn-up knees. "Look, I know I'm not—you don't have to tell me everything that goes on in your head. God knows, I don't _want_ to know most of it, especially where a little black-eyed demon bitch is involved."

"Dean," Sam said warningly without bothering to look at him.

Out of the corner of his eye, Sam saw Dean hold up a placating hand. "Fine. The thing is, you blanked out on me. You _never_ do that, Sam. Never. And I gotta know why."

Sam stubbornly kept his lips pressed together, staring out into the rain. He knew Dean would absolutely freak if he told him what happened back in Concrete. Trouble was, he couldn't see any way out of telling him at the moment: Dean would keep badgering him until he got what he wanted. For a guy who claimed he didn't like to share and care, his brother was certainly skilled at prying things out of other people.

Dean shifted in his seat. "And before you go calling me a hypocrite or anything, can you honestly say that me not sharing what I did on my summer vacation has put you in any danger?"

His throat tightened at the casual way Dean referred to his time in Hell, but he shook his head. "Not yet," he muttered.

He saw Dean's jaw clench. And although the next words he spoke were simple, they cut like the blade of a knife. "Sam, I can't hunt with you if I can't count on you."

Sam whipped his head up. Dean was giving him a level stare, and when he saw that he had his little brother's attention, he lifted his eyebrows as if to say, _You know I'm right._

He met his gaze for a moment before slumping back against the rock wall. "Yeah, I know," he finally agreed, his voice as rough as the granite at his back.

Silence fell while Sam fiddled with the strap of his backpack, trying to think of what to say, how to phrase this without hurting his brother further. Finally he let out a huff of breath. There probably wasn't any way to do that.

"When we were in Washington," he said, staring out from underneath the overhang into the pouring rain. "Hope had never made a wish on the well. She knew it was there, but she thought she had everything she needed in Wesley, I guess." He heard Dean snort, but he didn't interrupt. So Sam went on, "She found out that we were going to get rid of the well, and that meant getting rid of her feelings for Wesley. So she, uh, made a wish so that wouldn't happen."

"She made a wish." There was a pause, and Dean added, "Keep going," his voice tight as if he was bracing himself to hear something he didn't want to.

Reluctantly, Sam shifted his seat so he was facing Dean, keeping his drawn-up knees between them as if to shield him from the explosion he knew was coming. "It was a perfectly clear day, right? And then this little tiny cloud appeared out of nowhere, and a lightning bolt came down, and…" He made a slicing motion downward with one hand. _Fill in the blank, dude._

Dean stared at him. "You got struck by lightning," he said in a flat tone.

Sam ducked his head to the side. "That's what Wesley said."

"What do you mean, that's what Wesley said?" The deep crescents were forming at the inside edges of Dean's eyebrows that indicated he was royally confused. "You were there, weren't you?"

_Please don't make me say it_, Sam thought desperately. "I—I wasn't exactly aware of what was going on right then."

Dean cocked his head to the side. "You were knocked out?"

_God, are you deliberately being stupid?_ he thought uncharitably. "More than that," he admitted as though it were being physically dragged out of him.

Dean stared at him, mouth slightly open, and Sam could almost see the gears turning behind his green eyes. _You were there, but someone had to tell you what happened because you were hit by lightning..._ Suddenly his low growl split the silence. "You can't be serious."

Sam nodded, unable to tear his eyes away from the play of emotions across Dean's face.

"You fuckin' died?" Dean leaned slightly forward. "Again?"

"Not—not really. I mean, the wishes were all undone, right? I'm fine." Sam made to spread his arms wide, then bit back an exclamation when his left hand contacted the granite wall next to him.

"For how long?" Dean demanded, his eyes lit with anger.

"Not long." Sam shook his head. "Maybe a minute, not much more."

"And you were planning on telling me about this when?" Dean asked with raised eyebrows.

He deliberately shrugged and turned to put his back against the wall again. "I wasn't, actually."

"What the hell, Sam? You can't keep something like that to yourself. A chick you pick up at a bar, I don't need to know about. You get struck by lightning, I need to hear about it." Dean's shoulders were tense, the muscles in his arms corded as they held his knees to his chest.

"And how is that different from you not telling me what I want to know, huh?" Sam glared at him and stabbed a finger towards the ground. "Everything you went through down there was for me, Dean. I need to know what happened to you."

"You don't want to know." Dean dropped his head and muttered the words into his kneecaps.

Sam chuffed out a breath. "That's the problem, man. I _do_ want to know. But you won't tell me."

"Okay, fine, _I_ don't want you to know." Dean lifted his head and stared out into the falling rain. "How's that?"

"No different from me." Sam matched his brother's position, looking out over the mountainside and the muddy trail in front of them, thinking about all of the other things he was holding back from Dean. He shook his head. Dean might not want to talk about the torture that had happened to him, but that was in a separate category from the torments Sam had been willing to inflict on others in his quest to get his brother back.

Remembering a long-ago conversation after defeating Bloody Mary, he quietly said, "Some things I just have to keep to myself."

Silence fell for a moment. Then Dean sighed and said something Sam never thought he would hear him say. "Man, sometimes it's like I don't even know you anymore."

The words slipped out of Sam's mouth before he could stop them. "So does that mean you'd want to hunt me?" he asked bitterly.

Dean froze, his face going white. "Don't you say that, Sam. Don't you ever say that."

Sam held up his hands and leaned back. "Sorry," he muttered, aware that maybe he'd gone too far.

In the next moment, he became shockingly aware of just how far he'd gone. Dean's eyes were flashing, his mouth tight with anger as he leaned closer and jabbed a finger into his little brother's chest. "I _died_ for you, Sammy. I freakin' died and went to Hell for you. So don't you _ever_ ask me if I would hunt you."

A year ago, Sam would have shrunk back from the emotion that was rolling off his brother in waves, the bright green eyes haunted by unimaginable memories that were fueling his brother's anger. He would have apologized for saying the wrong thing, would have buried the questions that sprang to his mind and tried to make peace.

But he'd spent months on his own, first after the Trickster and then after the hellhounds, and he'd taken on beings more powerful than he ever thought he could have faced. And he had more steel in him now than he ever knew he could possess. So he lifted his chin and replied firmly, "You made me a promise, Dean. You made Dad a promise. Are you telling me that you have no intention of keeping it?"

Quicker than thought, Dean backhanded him across the face. Sam automatically raised a hand to his stinging cheek, more shocked than hurt. Dean's eyes flickered to his cheek and back. With practically no inflection in his voice, he said, "Fuck you, Sam."

And then Dean scrambled forward out of the overhang, snatched his pack off the ground, and strode off into the rain.

Sam stared after him until he disappeared from sight around a curve in the trail. "What the hell was that?" he muttered out loud. Then he shook himself and clambered back onto the trail, glad that the rain was letting up. There was no way he was going to catch up to Dean if the weather didn't improve.

He just hoped there was something worth catching up to.

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Research shows a strong and significant correlation between the number of reviews a chapter receives and how quickly new chapters are posted. However, new data to confirm these findings are always welcome…


	11. Chapter 11: Riptide

Oh yeah, I'm a feedback junkie. Er, that is, thanks for helping me confirm that research I mentioned; here's a chapter ahead of schedule!

Also, I've finally gotten a LiveJournal going, and this story is being posted there as well in case you'd rather read and comment there. The link is in my proflie.

Now, a number of you have seen this coming, but I hope you'll still enjoy it. What good is it to have a _deus ex machina_ (_angelus ex machina_?) on the show if you can't make use of it in fic?

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I'm 'round the corner from anything that's real  
I'm across the road from hope  
I'm under the bridge in a riptide that's taken  
Everything I call my own  
--U2, "One Step Closer"

oooooooooooooo

As if seeing Sam's freaky powers on display at extremely close range wasn't enough, Dean had now been treated to two follow-up revelations that told him things he had never wanted to know about what his brother thought he was capable of. Not only had he tried to make a deal, but the stakes he had played for were absolutely horrifying. And if Sam thought that agreeing to lead a demon army meant he could tell them to chase their own tails, well, he really had no clue.

Dean had _seen_ demon armies. No amount of super-powered Sammy could possibly be enough to hold them back. The kid didn't know how to bargain, either. An offer that big better have gotten Dean alive and kicking, not just dead in a nicer location. The unknown demon he'd pitched his idea to had probably done the whole world a favor by keeping his brother from following through on such a monumentally stupid idea.

And now Sam's earlier words were coming back to haunt him, about their father putting him down. Given the seriously dark magic Sam had apparently come within a hair's-breadth of trying out, not to mention the whole demon army thing, Dean was terrified that he was finally being faced with the choice their father had laid on him.

Was this what John Winchester had meant by not being able to save his own son?

And then before Dean could ponder it any more, their captors apparently decided they'd gotten what they wanted and were ready to make an end of it. He barely had time to comprehend what was happening before Sam was on his knees with a gun at the back of his head, and then the blood froze in his veins and he knew deep down that he had already made his choice, that he would keep doing everything he could to save his brother, right to the bitter end. "What are you doing?" he choked out.

Standing ahead of him and to his left, Tom had a familiar, grim look on his face: a look Dean recognized from the times he'd killed something that used to be human but wasn't anymore. It twisted his stomach to see it directed at his brother.

Then he saw a flash of metal right in front of him, and his stomach clenched further. Apparently Harry had reclaimed his knife, and his towering height made it easy for him to reach over Dean's shoulder and hold the blade warningly before his face.

"Give me one good reason why we shouldn't do this," Tom said. "One explanation why the two of you aren't traitors to the human race."

"Dean hasn't done anything wrong," Sam said quickly, his breath coming as hard and fast as if he'd been running up the mountainside. "There's nothing supernatural about him, no reason to hunt him." He licked his lips. "Do whatever you want to me, but let him go."

"Sam, shut up!" Dean barked. "You haven't done anything wrong, either."

"Are you kidding me?" Sam cautiously turned his head sideways, mindful of how the gun moved along with him. "You saw what I just did. I can't stop it, Dean. I can't _not_ do this thing if it means saving you, or me, or somebody else. But I'm _not_ going to turn into one of them while I'm doing it."

"Demons lie," he snapped back, wishing Harry wasn't holding the knife right in the center of his field of vision. He'd already had more than a lifetime's worth of seeing blades at close range. "God damn it, you know that!"

"They also tell the truth." Sam visibly swallowed and gave him a meaningful look. "And you know she's not the only one who's told us that."

Dean's eyes narrowed as he thought of their angelic visitation a few weeks ago. "That's not what they meant and you know it."

"You don't know what they meant," Sam retorted. His eyes flickered up to Tom and Harry as if to remind Dean that they weren't alone. "You don't know that they weren't talking about this exact thing." He jerked his chin in the direction of the dark spot on the floor and the still-unconscious woman next to it.

Tom broke in. "Look, this is all very interesting, but—"

"Shut up!" both brothers snapped at him before turning back to each other.

"Dean, let it go." Sam's voice cracked on the last word as he stared pleadingly at him. "Remember what Dad said."

"Like hell!" Dean barked back, the fear inside him suddenly doubling in strength. _Sam, don't you give up on me_.

"Look, you have no idea what it's like." Sam shifted slightly, leaning towards Dean and away from the gun. "You don't know how it feels to be able to do these things," he went on, his voice curling in disgust.

Dean opened his mouth to tell Sam to shut up and not give their captors any more ammo when he noticed something. Sam was kneeling sideways from Dean's perspective, his back towards the chair he'd been tied to and his left side towards Dean. So when he started doing something with his bound wrists, Dean had a pretty clear view. A flash of metal set off a spark of hope within him. Sam must have been carrying a belt knife that he hadn't been able to get to while strapped to the chair. Now that his arms were free, it looked like he had managed to tug it out enough to make the sharp edge available for use.

Which meant there might actually be a way out of this after all.

Before the pause could grow long enough to make anyone suspicious, he plunged on, not taking the time to think about whether he meant what he was saying or not. "Sam, it doesn't mean anything. You're right, it's not the abilities, it's how you use them. You're doing a good thing, pulling demons out of people like that. So what if you don't need to chant a little Latin first."

"So what?" Harry's incredulous voice rose behind him. "So he's practically a demon himself, doing freaky shit with his mind like that."

Dean whirled around in a fury, momentarily forgetting about the knife until he found its tip pricking the underside of his jaw in front of the rope that was still wrapped around his neck. He was still angry enough to spit out, "You have no idea what you're talking about, so shut the hell up."

Harry pressed the knife upwards ever so slightly, and Dean suddenly figured maybe he'd better take it down a notch or this method of distracting everyone's attention from Sam wasn't going reap any benefits.

"My son may be exaggerating, but he has a point," Tom's voice rang out.

Dean slowly took a step back. When Harry didn't press forward, he turned sideways, keeping both father and son in his sight. "He has a crock of bullshit is what he has."

Tom shook his head and addressed Sam, whose fingers abruptly stilled. "Boy, we can understand to some extent that your survival instincts have overridden doing the right thing. You probably haven't run into too many suicidal werewolves or vampires, right?"

Thoughts of Madison sprang into Dean's head, and from the stricken expression on Sam's face, he could tell he was thinking the same thing.

"So it's not surprising that you're still alive and kicking, knowing what you know about yourself. But you." Tom turned to Dean, his voice growing sterner. "You were raised to fight evil, boy. Hunt it down and kill it, no matter what form it takes. Your daddy taught you better than that. Even if it's your own flesh and blood, if it's on the dark side, it's got to go down. And the fact that you've been standing by all this time, not doing a thing to stop this creature—" his arm swung back as he pointed to Sam—"makes you just as guilty as him."

"He is not a creature." Dean's voice was low and cold, and he was practically shaking with fury. "He's my brother. He's as human as any of us."

"You can still say that after what we all saw right here in this room?" Tom shook his head. "Maybe he used to be human. But he's not anymore. That's what we hunt, boy, all of us. Or at least some of us used to."

"There's a big fat difference between 'not human' and 'evil'," Dean retorted. "And Sam is neither one of those."

He remembered when his brother had made that same argument about supernaturals to him, before he'd even known what was coursing through his veins, back when Lenore had let Sam go and he had uselessly pled his case to leave the vampires be. There were plenty of times since then when Sam had had to take the same position when it was clear every time that he was arguing for himself as much as for the poor soul they were trying, usually unsuccessfully, to save.

There was no reason to think their captors thought any differently about him now.

"You're wrong," Joe spoke up. "You know better than that. You _know_."

"No, you think you know." Dean knew he had to keep their attention focused on him, but it was also good to have an opportunity to let out the anger that had been building inside of him ever since he walked into that punch in the motel room. No, actually, ever since Sam told him he had freakin' _died_ three days ago and wasn't planning on sharing. His voice rose. "There's a whole lot more going on here than you have any clue about, so why don't you shut up and stop playing hunter."

"Dean," Sam warned, the undercurrent in his voice clear, a combination of _Don't piss them off any more_ and _Don't let anything slip about the Apocalypse._

Tom took two quick strides towards him, knocking Harry's knife aside with one hand and grabbing Dean's chin in the other, fingers digging into his cheek. "I've been a hunter since before you were born, you good-for-nothing traitor. I've killed more evil than you can possibly imagine."

Dean let out a bark of a laugh. "My imagination's pretty much unlimited at this point," he spat out. "Or are you dumb enough you've already forgotten where I've been?"

Tom's eyes narrowed further. "And yet you're still defending him," he said, shaking his head back and forth. "You know what pure evil is like better than any of us, and you're _still_ willing to let him run loose."

"That's because I know he isn't evil." Dean pitched his raspy voice loud enough to be sure Sam could hear it, too. "And you're right, I would know better than anyone else. So leave him the hell alone."

The older man looked at him for a second more before shoving him away. "Answer me one question," he said, "and I'll think about it."

"Tom!" Joe protested from his position behind Sam. Dean saw him lower the gun a little, saw that Sam had noticed it too. Harry's knife was down at his side, and if Dean could strike out at him once Sam's hands were free, they had a shot at this.

"What is it?" Dean asked, lifting his chin, willing everyone's eyes to stay on him.

Tom looked him in the eye. "Tell me how you got out of Hell."

Dean quirked up the corner of his mouth. "If you're looking for something you can pass on to your friends, I think it was kind of a one-time-only offer."

"All right, that's it." Joe brought the gun back up to the back of Sam's head and cocked it, the sound echoing loudly in the quiet barn.

"No, wait!" Dean called, panic replacing his smart mouth. "He said he was an angel, okay?"

Sam's head shot up, and he stared accusingly at Dean. Dean made a face back that said, _What else am I supposed to do?_

"You're kidding me. An angel? Fluffy white wings and a halo?" Tom snorted. "I been hunting for forty years and I've never seen anything like that."

"More like prickly than fluffy," Dean muttered. Then louder he added, "Yeah, that's what he said. And since none of our wards or seals did a thing to hold him back, and something that can kill a demon didn't do squat to him, I'm thinkin' he was telling the truth."

Behind Tom, he could see that Joe had lowered his gun again, staring at Dean as if he had suddenly announced that he was really a woman and was about to perform a ballet dance for all of them. And below Joe, Sam was once more working the knife back and forth, and Dean saw a glimmer of triumph on his face as he looked back at him. _Okay, here we go,_ he thought as Sam gave him a small nod.

"Why the hell would an angel bother with you?" Harry growled. "My mother died ten years ago, and no angel ever thought she was worth bringing back."

Dean's lips tightened. "Look, we can play the dead family game all night, if you want. I don't know." He shifted his weight as he lowered his voice and snarled, "All I know is that you're going down."

And with that he leaned back on his left leg and brought his right up in a swift kick that landed right in Tom's midsection.

The older man doubled over, and Dean smashed his knee up into his chin before spinning away from Harry, who fortunately hadn't reacted right away, considering he was still holding the silver knife.

A few feet away, he saw Sam shooting to his feet, the top of his head slamming into Joe's jaw and knocking the other man back. His hands flew out from his sides, but he retained his grip on this gun.

Dean's vision blurred for a moment as he moved away from a downward attack from the suddenly-active Harry, and he realized with a curse that the noose was still around his neck. He started fumbling with the ropes binding his wrists, painfully aware that his range of motion was going to be limited. At least Sam should be able to move around freely.

But then he realized with horror that he'd misjudged what he'd seen. Sam had cut through one strand of the ropes, but not all of them, and his hands were still trapped behind him, the small knife flashing back and forth as he tried to cut himself free before Joe recovered. "Son of a bitch," Dean muttered, dodging a swipe from Harry as he desperately fumbled with the ropes around his own wrists. If he could just get that one knot loose…

The rope gave suddenly, and he frantically pulled at a loop of it while Harry raised his arm, the knife pointing downwards. The rope slid free and he brought his hands up just as Harry's arm swung down.

One of Dean's hands grabbed the younger man's wrist, one grabbed his upper arm, and then he twisted in a direction the human elbow wasn't designed to bend. Harry let out a scream and bent forward, the knife sliding out of his hand. Dean gave him an extra shove and scooped up the knife as he shook off the rest of the ropes.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tom rising to his feet, and he leaned forward, putting all of his weight into a punch that felled him once more. But the move put him off balance, making it easy for Harry to grab his shirt with one hand and hurl him to the ground.

Dean rolled, feeling the pull of the rope around his neck, trying desperately to both keep hold of the knife and not stab himself. While he was still on his back, Harry started to bend over him, leaving himself wide open.

It was an automatic reaction to reach up with the blade and bury it in the younger man's shoulder.

Harry let out a screech and toppled to the ground, Dean rolling away to avoid being crushed while simultaneously pulling the knife free. He unsteadily made his way to his feet, still clutching the knife, willing his shaky arms to stop trembling, and looked for his brother.

His throat tightened when he saw Sam and Joe struggling for the gun, Sam's arms finally free but locked in a battle with the red-haired man. They looked evenly matched, Sam's superior size undermined by his injuries and stiffness and the rope still dangling from his wrists. Someone's finger reached the trigger, and a shot echoed through the barn, thunking into one of the rafters.

Suddenly a movement caught Dean's attention, and he whirled to see Tom rising from the floor where he'd been checking on his son, who was bleeding freely onto the straw-covered concrete. "You son of a bitch!" Tom roared, advancing on him.

Dean lifted the knife as best he could given that his arms weren't really cooperating at the moment. Too late, he realized Tom wasn't headed towards him, but towards the end of the rope still sitting on the floor.

Knowing he only had seconds to act, Dean scrabbled at the rope around his neck, trying to loosen it enough that he could bring the knife up to cut it without fear of slicing his own throat. He got his fingers around it and had just started to pull when there was an almighty jerk from the other end. He cast a glance over his shoulder to see Tom, his face alight with anger, wrapping both hands around the rope.

Close to panic, Dean raised the knife and tried to saw at the rope around the back of his neck. He felt the strands start to part under the blade and worked harder, desperation rising within him.

It wasn't enough.

Another tremendous jerk lifted him off his feet, sending the knife slicing upwards into his scalp as the rope started to cut off his air. He had enough presence of mind to drop the knife and tug at the rope with both hands, becoming more frantic when it became apparent his dead weight was counterbalancing his efforts. His view of the barn was becoming infected with blurry black spots, and then his peripheral vision started to go.

"Dean!" The terror in Sam's voice matched what he had heard when the hellhounds had been shredding his flesh, and the memory of the horror and inevitability of that moment overwhelmed him like Sam had earlier been overcome by the lightning flash. He tried to pull harder, but his muscles were losing their strength, and even the need ingrained in his very bones to fight for Sam's sake was ebbing away as his lungs remained empty.

He dimly saw Sam turn towards Tom, reaching out his hand, but without a gun or any kind of weapon in it. _Fat lot of good that's going to do,_ he thought to himself. _Not like this guy's possessed._

Then, just as he was sliding into unconsciousness, a blinding white light filled the room. _Huh, this isn't how it happened last time_, he thought, confused, a spark of hope blooming within him, even if it was too late. _Maybe I'm headed in the other direction?_

Dean used the last of his waning energy to drag his eyelids open. For a disorienting second, he thought another thunderstorm had started up, given the way the wind was howling, but then he realized the light was coming from the wide-open barn doors. A figure stood silhouetted in the light, arms outflung. In another second, Dean's eyes slid shut again, but not before he saw something that made him question whether it was really arms that he had seen outlined against the light.

Something settled underneath his feet, and the relief from the pressure on his neck was so great that he almost passed out anyway. He stood there for a moment, gasping for air, feeling precious oxygen slide down his throat and into his lungs, before opening his eyes again.

He realized he was standing on the chair he had earlier been tied to, though he had no idea how it had gotten under his feet. Dean had to lift a shaky hand to shield his gaze from the light, but there was too much of it filling the barn for him to make out much of anything. He turned his head and saw Harry as a crumpled heap on the floor. Behind him, Tom was frozen in place, jaw open, hands still wrapped around the rope.

Forcing his fingers to curl around the rope at his neck, Dean finally pulled it away, wresting it over his head and tossing the noose onto the floor in disgust. The cold wind sailing through the barn hit the open scratches on his neck, and he grimaced as he jumped down from the chair.

Sam was lying on the ground, cautiously raising himself up, eyes squinted against the white light that was filling the room. Joe was on the ground behind him, dazed but stirring, gun still in his outstretched hand but pointing off into the back corner of the barn. As he watched, Sam pulled the last of the ropes free and turned around to reach for the gun.

"No!" came a roar from behind him. Dean spun around to see Tom charging him, a knife in his upraised hand, his eyes wild with hate and anger. Dean started backing away, wishing that Harry's knife was still in his hands. Then he tripped and fell over the noose he'd dropped earlier, sending him crashing hard to the ground. Tom was looming over him…

…and then he wasn't.

"Shut your eyes, Dean," a familiar voice suddenly murmured in his ear. His soldier's instincts took over, and he slammed his eyes closed before it had fully registered whose voice it was.

When recognition set in, combined with the vision of wings at the barn door, it took every remaining shred of willpower to obey and not open his eyes to look at Sam. He couldn't even shout out a warning or a command of his own with his damaged throat. All he could do was sit there like frickin' Indiana Jones while a gusty wind swirled around him and white light shone, bright enough to burn his eyeballs.

In front of him, Dean heard the thump of a body hitting the floor, and he lifted his hand to clamp over his eyes. He wasn't keen on having his vision burnt out, but damn if this wasn't the hardest thing he'd had to do all night. Another gust of wind buffeted him, and he bent double against it as he staggered to his feet, bracing himself for whatever might come next. He strained his ears, but all he could hear was the howling of the wind.

Then everything went silent.

A touch on his arm sent him leaping about a foot in the air, and he hoped to hell that Sam hadn't seen him jump like a girl. "It is safe now," said Castiel's calm voice. "You can open your eyes."

Dean obeyed to see that he and the angel were the only ones still standing, although in his case, he was pretty sure it was by sheer willpower alone. His gaze swept quickly around the room, seeing all three of their captors out cold on the floor.

Then he saw Sam, sprawled on his back, fresh blood staining his upper lip, and his heart sank.

"Sam!" he croaked and started forward. But his legs suddenly gave out on him, and he collapsed onto the concrete floor, cursing at how his body was so damn weak as to betray him like this, after a day of being bashed against rocks before being strangled by a demon and hung from his neck.

When he managed to lift his head, fighting against the pain radiating from every muscle in his body, Castiel was moving forward, kneeling beside his brother and reaching out to touch his forehead. For a moment, Dean wondered if the angel had some special magical healing ability, and if so, why hadn't he used it on Dean, considering the condition he was in? Fear rose up in his throat. What was wrong with Sam?

Then suddenly, Dean remembered the last time they'd spoken to the angels and the threats Uriel had made to Sam, and his fear intensified. What if Castiel wasn't here to help his brother? What if he was here to take him away for the demonic powers he'd been forced to use in order to save Dean? "Get your hands off him," he hoarsely demanded.

Castiel said something that Dean couldn't make out through the roaring in his ears. Sam stirred slightly under the angel's touch and then went completely still.

"God damn it, don't you touch him!" Dean cried, fighting to hold onto consciousness, barely able to hear his own words between the hoarseness of his voice and his own fading senses. "He didn't have a choice. Damn it, Cass," he went on, his voice dropping lower and lower. "Please…"

The last thing Dean saw was the grim set of the angel's expression as he looked over his shoulder, and despair followed him down into darkness.

oooooooooooooo

So, y'all _did_ want Castiel to show up, which means I'm going to get lots of happy reviews, right? (ducks behind shield again)


	12. Chapter 12: Crumbling

Once again, thanks for the reviews and alerts and favorites, and thanks to the anonymous reviewers I can't reply to. (casammy, in particular, I think you're exactly right, and you'll see that in this chapter and the next.) And in return, I promise you've seen the last of the cliffhangers. It's only emotional whumping from here on out. :) I do like to tie up my loose ends, though, so there's still a little ways to go…

Disclaimer and beta thanks are in the first chapter.

ooooooooooooooo

And in between the moon and you  
Angels get a better view  
Of the crumbling difference between wrong and right  
--Counting Crows, "Round Here"

ooooooooooooooo

When Sam finally came to, he felt like he was on fire. His left shoulder was a throbbing mass, his arms were stiff and sore from having been restrained behind him, and his head was pounding from killing the demon. The last thing he remembered was succumbing to unconsciousness on the floor of the barn. From the water-stained ceiling above him, and the threadbare brown drapes he could see out of the edges of his vision, apparently he was back at the motel. He turned his head to the side and saw Dean on the other bed, his chest regularly rising and falling, and he said a quick, silent prayer of thanks.

And then he realized someone else was watching him.

He sat up sharply, and the shabby motel room instantly began to spin. Putting one hand to his head, he fumbled under the pillow with the other, only to feel the stirrings of panic when he couldn't find Ruby's knife. He was groping around more frantically when a voice spoke from across the room.

"Sam Winchester, all is well. You are safe here."

He moved more slowly this time, raising his head to see the dark shape at the far corner of the room moving forward into the streetlight shining through the thin curtains. In the pale orange glow, he could make out Castiel's features, and he felt his shoulders relax slightly.

Then Sam realized what the angel's presence meant for him, and he stiffened again. _One step out of line_, Uriel had warned. And he'd taken a pretty damn big leap right over that line.

Apparently someone had come to collect.

Turning to the bed next to his, he looked at Dean sound asleep, face pinched with pain even in his slumber. "Is he okay?" Sam asked hoarsely, noting even in the dim light the ring of dark purple bruises around his brother's neck. _Will he be okay without me?_ he wanted to ask. _ Can you keep him from doing anything stupid this time?_

"He is alive," Castiel said, moving closer so that he stood between the twin beds. "He will recover, though he may be in pain for a few days." He spread his hands apart, and Sam had no idea that an angel could look so helpless. "I'm not exactly a doctor."

Sam swallowed, and the movement tugged at something at his throat. He reached up to feel the rough weave of a cotton gauze pad and the smooth lines of adhesive tape around it over the spot where Joe's knife had cut into his neck. Obviously Castiel knew something about patching people up, although it was odd that he had bothered with Sam at all if he was here to take him away. "But you healed Dean before," he said. "When you—when you brought him back."

The slightest quirk turned up the corner of the other man's lips. "That took assistance from a higher source."

"Oh." There wasn't much more that Sam could say than that. Dean's body had been restored by God Himself? He could just imagine the "Huh!" his brother would have given if he'd heard that. "How long have we…"

"I brought Dean here, put him to sleep, and then returned for you. You were already unconscious and have remained so for the three hours I have been here. The woman and the three men are currently receiving medical attention."

There were many parts of Castiel's straightforward statement that bothered Sam, but he latched onto one in particular. "Put him to sleep?" he asked incredulously.

The angel looked down at Dean and a shadow of what might have been regret crossed his face. "He was…reluctant to remain here while I went back for you. He was neither completely lucid nor confident that I was telling the truth about your condition."

Yeah, that sounded like Dean. Sam felt the faintest stirrings of a grin. Then he thought about the question Castiel hadn't actually answered, and his face fell again. "You knocked him out?"

"Not with a blow, no." The brown-haired man's head tilted to the side.

"What did you do to him?" Sam demanded.

"He needs to rest," came the quick reply. "And we need to talk."

Sam would have crossed his arms over his chest if he hadn't been afraid of how much it would pull on his bruised shoulder. And then there was the fact that it would make him look like a petulant teenager. Still, he put as much bravado into his voice as he could as he asked, "About what?"

"You were given a warning," Castiel began.

Lifting his chin, Sam replied, "I've been given lots of warnings." He'd also been struck down by a lightning bolt once already this week, and he wondered if this was going to feel the same way. And then where would he—

He grimaced. There wasn't really much question of where he was going after this, was there? Maybe it was a good thing Dean hadn't told him anything about Hell; he didn't really want to know what he was in for.

Castiel was going on, "And yet you choose to ignore them all. I don't know how much more plainly it can be said to you. You are pushing the boundaries so far that it is only a matter of time before they break."

Sam looked sharply at the angel, whose face was still only vaguely visible in the dim light of the room. Did that meant the boundaries had not been broken yet? "This from the guy who was willing to erase an entire town?" he muttered. When Castiel's expression darkened, he hastily added, "I didn't have a choice."

"That's what you said about Samhain," Castiel cut him off. "Sam, I know these are difficult choices you are faced with, but the answer is fairly straightforward."

He stared. "You mean it would have been better to let Dean die? To let that bitch take him back down to Hell where he can be tormented some more until you decide he's useful to you again?" He shook his head, wincing as it made his headache stronger. "No way. They can't have him back, and I don't care what it takes."

Castiel drew in a deep breath and regarded him more sternly. "What if it takes everything you have?" _What if it takes your soul?_ was the unspoken conclusion.

Sam looked back unflinchingly. "Then that's what it takes."

Silence fell. He looked over at Dean to find him apparently unaware of the shouting match taking place above him. Whatever Castiel had done to him had knocked him out good, and he didn't know whether to be further upset for that, or grateful that at least Dean was getting some rest.

"Why do you think Dean's death would send him back to Hell?" Castiel's voice was curious, almost light in tone.

"Because you dragged him out of there," Sam replied, the unspoken _Duh!_ not far from the surface as he laid on the sarcasm so the anger wouldn't take over. "I mean, I'm not exactly up on demon contract law, but I'm guessing that doing what you did broke whatever kind of deal he made."

"Your guess is incorrect." Castiel folded his arms across his chest. "There was no time frame specified. Dean traded his soul for your life, he went below at the specified time, and now that debt has been paid."

Sam stared at him. "Really?" he asked, his voice rising into a higher register as hope that he hadn't been aware he so desperately needed rose within him.

The angel's rumpled head bobbed once. "Really." He tilted his head forward. "Knowing that, would you still have done what you did tonight?"

There was no hesitation as Sam answered, "Yes."

Castiel sighed. "Maybe you don't understand the gravity of the situation we are in."

He let out a snort and reached out for a pillow to stuff between his aching back and the hard wooden headboard. Apparently this was going to be a long conversation. "Armageddon? Yeah, I think I get it."

Castiel's piercing blue eyes continued to rest heavily on him. Sam started to feel like he was a bug under a microscope and resisted the urge to squirm in his seat. If Dean were in his place, he'd be making some smart-ass remark about taking a picture instead.

But Sam wasn't his brother.

"I am talking about you." Castiel came a step closer. "You and these…abilities of yours."

"Why is that all anyone ever wants to talk about?" Sam muttered, that time successfully channeling Dean.

The response was straightforward, as if the answer were completely black and white. "Because you shouldn't have these powers. Having them, you shouldn't use them."

Sam snorted. "Look, you're the one who was willing to destroy a whole town to stop a demon. I don't see how that's any different than what I can do."

"I do not expect you to understand—" Castiel started, but Sam cut him off.

"Like hell you don't," he snapped back, leaning forward where he sat. "Otherwise you'd get rid of me and be done with it." Before the angel could respond, he went on, "Look, it's not what you think. It's not like I get some kick out of using them, or like I'm going on a power trip. It hurts like someone's trying to drill a hole in my head. It wears me out and makes me feel sick for days afterwards. And it makes me afraid of myself." Sam heaved in a breath and spoke words he'd never admitted to a living soul. "I'm afraid of my own head, my own body. Don't you get that?"

His words rang out in the room. Castiel let the echoes fade before taking a seat at the creaking swivel chair at the desk at the foot of the bed. "Tell me what it is that you do, and how it started." The words were delivered in a mild tone, but it was clear they were a command rather than a request.

Sam slumped back against the pillows, feeling like a balloon that had just deflated. "It's kind of hard to describe. At first I didn't know what I was doing," he muttered. Ruby had shown up later in her new body after Sam had already had a taste of what the possibilities were, which was why it hadn't taken much of anything to persuade him to become her pupil.

At the look of impatience on Castiel's face, he went on, "It started a couple of weeks after Dean was gone. I—it was the first time I'd encountered a demon since Lilith. It had possessed this teenager in Texas and at first made him do things that just seemed like a reckless teenager, you know? But then it started doing things that were definitely more…demon-like." The smashed-up car and the liquor store robbery were one thing, but the teenage girl ripped inside-out was not something your average sixteen-year-old was capable of.

"How did you hear about it?" Castiel asked.

Sam looked down at his fingers, fidgeting with the edge of the scratchy sheet. "I had been tracking omens, hoping to find Lilith. I suppose I was looking for a fight." He looked across at his sleeping brother, watching the rise and fall of his chest the way he'd done so many times since his return, watching to make sure he was really there. "And when I got there, he—he looked so much like Dean had at that age." He let out a soft snort. "Not that Dean really looks much different now than he did at sixteen, but anyway. And then when I caught up with it, it knew who I was and it started taunting me."

He could still hear the snarling voice in his head, listing all the tortures that Dean had already been subjected to, how many times his body had been torn apart and put back together, how many times he'd suffered worse agonies than any Sam had ever seen him endure, and how it was going to go on forever. He shut the door on the memory and started speaking again.

"So I lost it," he said quietly. "And then, all of a sudden, I could _see_ the demon inside him. It was like the person had faded into the background and there was only this thing left. And I reached out towards it and I…started _pulling_."

A sudden movement made him look up sharply, and he realized that he had been unconsciously demonstrating his movements. His arm was outstretched towards where Castiel had been sitting a second before, his fingers partially extended, and he realized with a start that his mind had been reaching in front of him as well. "Sorry," he said, shaking his head and lowering his hand.

Castiel didn't respond, and Sam frowned as he slowly realized the angel was standing at the foot of Dean's bed. Suddenly tired of the half-dark room, Sam reached for the nightstand and flicked on the cheap motel lamp, bathing the room in a pale yellow glow. In the other bed, Dean didn't shift at all.

When Sam looked up at Castiel, who had somehow traveled six feet to his left without Sam noticing, he saw in his face traces of the same wariness he'd seen when he'd first met the angel and been rebuffed. Sam's mouth set in a grim line. _Fine_, he thought_, be that way. You're the one who asked._

"So you exorcised this boy?" the other man asked.

Sam nodded, dropping his eyes. "He was already dead. His neck had been broken when the demon possessed him." One finger traced the faded floral pattern of the bedspread as he went on, "It wasn't until the next one that I realized I didn't know how to kill the demon without killing the person as well."

"The next one." Castiel's words were spoken carefully. "How many were there?"

"You mean you don't know?" Sam retorted, looking up sharply. "You seem to know so much about me, about my tainted blood and my demon powers." He spat the words out, but no matter how many times he said the words in his head, hearing them out loud still sent a chill through him. He had to look away at Dean, obliviously sleeping beside them. _He still cares about me_, he thought. _He still thinks I'm worth it. Even if no one else does._ The events of tonight had taught him that much, at least.

Silence fell. Out of the corner of his eye, Sam saw Castiel moving, coming close enough to perch on the edge of Dean's bed. Dean rolled slightly onto his back as the mattress shifted, and Sam's throat hurt all over again at the sight of the torn skin around his neck. He swallowed and looked back at the other man, who was regarding him patiently.

Then something struck him, and he examined the angel more closely, scrunching his forehead into a frown and narrowing his eyes. He thought for a moment that it was double vision from when his head had hit the ground after he was shoved out of the pickup, but that was many hours ago.

Besides, he knew better than that.

After a moment, he said slowly, "I'm not seeing the real you, am I?"

Castiel shook his head. "You're seeing a man with no living relatives who died three months ago from inoperable cancer. In another context, you might say he willed his body to science."

Sam looked at him a moment longer, absorbing that information. This wasn't an angel in front of him after all. Well, it was, but he was possessing a human. No, it was more like he was borrowing a body from a human who didn't need it anymore, which paralleled Ruby's situation a little too closely for comfort. That explained why it looked like he could see something else sitting inside the other man's skin.

Something not unlike what he saw when he concentrated on a person possessed by a demon.

The connection slammed home in his brain, and he blinked. "That's why you're—" he bit his lip, hesitating to use the word "afraid," even if it was what he meant. "So cautious around me. What I can do, this power I have…I could do the same thing to you that I can to a demon, couldn't I?"

The single grave nod he got in response made his heart sink. _Oh, God_. He could—well, "exorcise" probably wasn't the right word—send an angel out of its human host and presumably back to Heaven. Sam folded an arm over his midsection and fought back a wave of queasiness. If any of them could have done this, any of the "special children" that Azazel had chosen, it would certainly make them a powerful addition to a demon army, able to vanquish the heavenly host and thus their greatest foes.

The hunters' words had been right after all. What kind of a creature _was_ he?

"I'm afraid that's not all."

His head snapped up towards Castiel, who for the first time was looking at Sam with the kind of look he would have expected an angel to have: compassion and understanding. But instead of reassuring him, it made the knot in his stomach grow tighter. He lifted his other hand to his temple, where a pounding rhythm had begun to beat in time with his pulse. He was exhausted from the six miles they'd hiked earlier in the day, plus his battle with the demon on top of being kept awake all night. His shoulder and chest muscles ached from fighting against his restraints, and the torn skin around his wrists was joining the chorus of pain that was driving him crazy.

And yet, he knew he had no choice but to listen to what the angel had to tell him.

He licked his dry lips. "What else?" he asked in a hoarse voice that sounded as rough as the last words he had heard Dean say.

Castiel let out a sigh. "At the end, in the barn. You were reaching out towards one of those men."

"I thought they might be possessed." He hadn't really—it was all too realistic that hunters would be after him or Dean for legitimate reasons in their minds, especially given what they had witnessed in the barn. But it had made sense at least to check.

"What did you see when you looked at them?" Castiel's voice was low and intense.

Sam suddenly couldn't look away from his clear blue eyes. "I didn't see any demons. I just saw a person."

"And what did you do?"

He frowned, trying to remember. Dean's feet had barely been brushing the ground, and he himself had been losing his fight against panic as Joe appeared to have been gaining the upper hand in the struggle for the gun. It had been clear that there was no way they were going to be able to talk their way out of the situation, even if they gave the answers the men had wanted to hear. Panic had led his powers to bloom unexpectedly before; maybe it would this time as well.

"I tried to move something," he finally said, slowly. "I tried to get the gun in my hand, and when that didn't work, I tried to move the rope away from Dean's neck." And to his frustration and terror, the telekinesis from Max's house had continued to be a one-time fluke.

"And then you looked at the man attacking Dean." Castiel sounded for a moment like a defense lawyer, leading him through a prepared speech. That is, if Sam's side was the one he was defending, which wasn't entirely clear.

"Yeah, I did." That was when Sam had reached out with his mind, hoping that there was a demon inside the man that he could destroy, assuming that he could somehow find the strength within his battered body to do so. "And I saw something…but it wasn't a demon." He looked more closely at Castiel. "What was it that I saw?"

Castiel's mouth drew downwards. "You are right: it was not a demon's soul that you sensed."

Sam frowned. Did demons even have souls? But if it wasn't a demon…

"It was the hunter's soul?" he asked incredulously. "But how is that possible?"

"For what purpose were you reaching out to him?" Castiel pressed.

Sam felt like his brain was on half speed. There was something extremely important here that he simply wasn't getting. It reminded him of sitting in classes as a freshman and struggling to keep up with his classmates who'd gone to elite public and private high schools while he'd patched together an education from dozens of random schools and stolen library books. He'd felt sluggish and stupid as they raised their hands to answer the professors' questions while he needed a few more minutes to get it. Eventually he had, in fact, caught up, but that bewildering feeling of not getting something when he knew someone expected him to had bothered him excessively ever since.

But this was much more important than a question in a lecture or a final exam. What was Castiel getting at…?

Then it hit him right between the eyes, as hard as any of the blows that had landed on him last night. "Oh, my God," he gasped out, putting both hands to his stomach as the nausea returned in full force. In another situation, he'd be worried that it was a symptom of a concussion, but he knew it was simply a physical reaction to the gut-wrenching truth he'd just figured out with Castiel's prodding.

He hadn't been trying to exorcise a demon when the barn door broke down and shining white light filled the room.

He'd been trying to remove a man's soul from his body.

ooooooooooooooo

And now we're firmly into the Land of Speculation…so please let me know what you think…


	13. Chapter 13: Thin Chain

It seems my speculations have been well-received, so here's more of the same. :) Only one more chapter after this one…

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Risin' from a long night as dark as the grave  
On a thin chain of next moments and something like faith  
--Bruce Springsteen, "Devil's Arcade"

ooooooooooooooo

Sam dropped his head and took a deep breath, fighting back the urge to hurl all over the bedspread. He followed it with another deep breath, and then another. He tried to force his mind to other thoughts: anything that didn't make him want to take the knife that should be under his pillow and drive it into his own chest, anything that didn't make him more horrified and disgusted with himself than he ever thought he could be. Was this what his father had known? Was this why he was afraid his youngest child was going to go dark side?

As his mind whirled, he was vaguely aware that Castiel was sitting as still as a stone on the other bed. Dean was still slumbering away beside him, and Sam was fiercely glad that his brother wasn't hearing this. As much as he didn't want to replace one secret with another, he wasn't keen on sharing this information. Dean thought he was enough of a freak for his demon-killing thing; he couldn't imagine how his brother would feel if he knew what the real danger was.

What felt like hours later, Sam finally raised his head, terrified of what he would see. Uriel had told him that if he stepped out of line, he was dead, and it was hard to see what he'd almost done as anything but stepping out of line. Steeling himself to see his death written on the angel's face, he looked up and promptly felt his own brow furrow in confusion.

If he didn't know better, he would have said Castiel's features displayed nothing but relief.

"It was the one thing we were not sure of," the brown-haired man said quietly. "Whether you knew this was within your capabilities." He gestured towards Sam and then lowered his hand back to his lap. "Clearly, you did not."

Sam's mouth twisted. "How do you know it's something I can do?" he forced out.

"I know what I saw," came the calm response. "It was why I stepped in when I did."

He blinked. "Wait, you came to save _them_? The bastards who'd been torturing Dean and were about to _kill_ us?" The nausea was suddenly replaced with white-hot rage, and Sam leaned forward where he sat, pressing his hands flat against the bedspread, conscious even in his anger of keeping his threatening posture to a minimum. "Were you sitting up in the rafters watching or something?"

"I am sorry that I didn't arrive sooner." Castiel looked over at Dean for a moment, concern evident on his face, and Sam was surprised at the flash of jealousy that shot through him. Then the angel turned back towards him, his clear blue eyes as intense as Sam had ever seen them. He added, "But they were not the men I was there to save."

Sam swallowed as the meaning of the words sank in, his anger vanishing as quickly as it had come. "Thank you," he said softly. Of all the times he had prayed for divine intervention in all the tight spots they'd ever been in, he'd never have believed that it could come so directly, or that he would have the chance to express his gratitude for it in person.

Castiel inclined his head but didn't reply.

The silence that followed was not entirely comfortable, with Sam unable to keep the thoughts out of his head of what Castiel had revealed to him. On the one hand, he didn't want to ask about it; he wanted to wipe it from his mind and forget about this whole new level of freakiness. But he knew all too well that pretending it didn't exist wouldn't make it go away. At the same time, it made for pretty good motivation as to why he shouldn't use his powers anymore. If he slipped up, if he was distracted or under as much pressure as he had been tonight, and reached out towards the wrong person…

No, the more he thought about it, the more he realized there was something else he needed from the angel, something more than having his and Dean's lives saved. He somehow had the feeling it wasn't too big a favor to ask.

He cleared his throat. "My, um, my dad told Dean before he died that..." He took a deep breath and went on, "That Dean was going to have to save me. And that if he couldn't, that he would have to kill me." He glanced at Castiel to see him looking back with his full attention. "I don't know what Dad knew or how he knew it. I don't think Dean does, either." He didn't according to their conversation of a few days ago, but as Sam knew all too well, Dean didn't always share everything he could--especially if he thought he was protecting Sam by keeping something quiet.

Sam drew in a slightly shaky breath and went on. "When I found that out, and then later, after I met some of the other people like me…I made Dean promise that if it came down to it, if I started becoming something I'm not, that he would do it. That he would kill me."

There was a pause. The room was so quiet that Dean's even breaths were the only thing Sam could hear. He went on quietly but intently, staring at his brother's sleeping form, "Dean would never break a promise. Never. But the thing is, I'm not sure he can keep this one. I mean, look at the lengths he's gone for me, you know?" He shot a quick look at Castiel, whose patient expression hadn't changed. "And he's already—we've been in situations where from a rational perspective, he should have wasted me." Sam shook his head, remembering the chilling knowledge that he'd been infected with a deadly virus, and then later, the horror of watching his own hands kill and torment other hunters and then the person he loved most in the world. Dean had had valid excuses for not acting each time, but Sam was afraid of the truth: that he couldn't count on his brother for this one, most crucial, thing.

He went on, "So I need to know that someone is gonna be able to do that for me. That if I—" Sam broke off, seeing for a moment Madison's face as he pulled the trigger to end her cursed life, her gratitude mixed with sorrow that had broken his heart. "If I go over the edge, that someone will stop me from hurting anyone. I _need_ to know that." _Now more than ever_, he mentally added.

After a moment, he turned his head to see Castiel regarding him, looking as though he was trying to make his mind up about something. The brown-haired man hesitated for a moment and then said simply, "My Father already had me make that promise."

A chill swept over Sam at the words. How could he possibly be of that much interest, that much importance, that _angels_ were making vows over him? His jaw clenched and he closed his eyes. As tired as his body was from the disastrous night they'd had, it was nothing compared to the exhaustion of his soul. He didn't want this burden that had been placed on him, couldn't imagine the enormity of what it meant for him and Dean and possibly the entire world. He hadn't been able to really rest since he'd found out he was a freak down to his very veins, and now it looked like he had even more reason to be afraid of himself and his own blood.

But at least no one else had to be afraid of him.

Sam opened his eyes and looked at Castiel. "Okay," he said. "Thank you." As dark as it was, the reassurance was comforting to a small extent. And it was there in a way it never had been with Dean. Wresting that promise from his brother had been a mistake, but he hadn't felt like he had a choice at the time. And a few weeks ago, Uriel had made him a threat, not a promise.

But this was an answer to Sam's request, made of his own free will. An answer to his prayers, really. If all else failed, he could count on Castiel to protect the rest of the world—and his brother—from him.

Castiel spoke, tilting his head forward. "There is one more thing."

Dread rose in Sam's throat, and he swallowed. God, what else could there be? "What?" he asked hoarsely.

"It is the first part of that promise that is the most important." Castiel waited a beat before adding softly, "Everyone is worthy of salvation, Sam Winchester. _Everyone_."

The tears welled up so quickly that they blinded him. He hitched in a sob as he squeezed his eyes shut, grabbing a fistful of the bedspread to ground himself. The flash of pain across his ribs reminded him that bursting into tears was going to hurt more than his pride, and he took a long, unsteady breath, forcing every ounce of stubbornness he possessed into breathing normally. The gift of hope he'd just been offered might be enough to make him break down completely, but there was no way he was doing so in front of another soul, human or angel.

He half expected Dean to burst out with something about stopping the waterworks before the room flooded. But on his own, Sam somehow managed to keep things under control, with only a few teardrops escaping his eyelids to trickle down his cheeks. For a long time there was no sound in the room but his own breathing, slowing and steadying as he concentrated on keeping a regular rhythm that didn't catch in the middle. Eyes still closed, he reached down for the sheet and wiped his eyes with it, wincing at the rough cotton on his bruised face.

A moment later, Sam drew in a deep, steadying breath. "Sorry about that," he muttered, not daring to look at the angel just yet. Turning to look at his brother, he took stock of the bruising on his face and neck, wondering what the rest of him looked like under the cheap motel covers and if angels knew anything about checking for internal injuries. "You're sure he's okay?" he couldn't help but ask.

"He is very strong," Castiel answered, apparently going along with the change of subject. "I did not see anything that indicated more serious injuries than what is visible on the surface. If checking him over yourself would ease your mind, I would not object."

_Like your objection could stop me_, Sam thought as he gingerly eased out of the bed. Ignoring the flares of pain that were igniting all over his body, he lowered himself onto the edge of Dean's bed and reached out to lay two fingers on his brother's pulse point. It beat strong and steady and reassuring beneath his fingertips, and he closed his eyes in a silent prayer of thanks.

As gently as he could, Sam tilted Dean's head to the side to get a look at his neck. His own jaw tightened once he clearly saw the red lines of scraped skin encircling his neck from the rough rope, compounded by blossoming violet bruises. Dean seemed to be breathing okay, a constant steady stream of inhalations and exhalations that sounded a little rough, but not too bad considering what his poor neck had been through.

He looked to Dean's wrists next, but they had already been bandaged. He shot a quick look at Castiel, who gave a slight shrug as if to say, _What did you expect me to do?_ Sam gave him a tiny smile of thanks in return before turning to the task of trying to remember where else Dean's body had been abused.

"I don't remember him being hit on the head," Sam mused out loud. Then his throat tightened. It had been earlier in the day that Dean's head slammed into that rock, when Sam was busy spacing out over the damn lightning.

"Why do you think he was?" came Castiel's response.

"Because he should have woken up by now," Sam answered, worry starting to gnaw at him. "With us moving around and talking like this…there's no way Dean would sleep through that." _Not to mention me shouting a few minutes ago,_ he added to himself.

"It is not due to a head injury," Castiel replied. "It is my doing."

Sam's eyebrows lowered. "What did you do to him?" he demanded, unconsciously putting a protective hand on Dean's chest.

Castiel shook his head. "Fear not, it is nothing harmful. I merely wanted to ensure he would not interrupt while we had our conversation."

Sam knew his features were radiating mistrust, but at the moment, he didn't really care. "Then can you wake him up?"

"I believe sleeping will help to heal his injuries more quickly," Castiel said with a look of admonishment.

"And I believe I want to know that my brother's okay," Sam retorted.

Their locked gazes battled for a moment. Castiel finally raised an eyebrow. "I'm afraid you're going to have to trust me," he said in that same infuriatingly calm tone of voice he used no matter what the situation was.

Sam frowned. Trusting an angel should come pretty easily, but he knew that part of him was not going to be satisfied until he was talking to Dean.

That is, if Dean would talk to him.

He swallowed and pulled his hand back. "Yeah, maybe it's better if he sleeps for a while," he said offhandedly.

Castiel gave him an odd look, but didn't say anything as Sam levered himself upwards and returned to his own bed.

Once Sam had settled himself back against the beat-up headboard, he looked over at Dean again and cleared his throat. "I don't think he's slept like this since he came back."

_Or since I came back_, he mentally added. In the year before Dean's…absence, the older man had had plenty of nightmares. It was one of the things that had made his return so familiar in a sick way: the sudden motion or noise that would wake Sam and have him reaching for a weapon before he realized it was just his brother's nightmare. Not that anything Dean was remembering these days could reasonably be described as _just_ a nightmare, he supposed.

"And have you?" came Castiel's response.

Sam looked up. "Have I what?" he asked blankly.

"You need to rest as well. Your body and spirit are exhausted."

_No shit_, Sam thought, but he couldn't bring himself to use profanity in front of an angel. "I'll be okay," he muttered.

"I am here and can keep watch," Castiel replied, leaning slightly forward where he sat.

"No offense, but I'd rather do that myself," Sam replied a little more sharply than he intended.

Castiel cocked his head to the side. "You are not in a condition to take on a fight if you had to."

Sam blinked at him stupidly before it sank in. "Damn it, they're still out there, right? They're still going to come after us, probably tell all the hunters they know." He threw the blankets aside, already planning how to get an unconscious Dean out of the motel room and into the Impala, assuming it was still outside. How had they already been here three hours with no sign of their kidnappers returning?

Castiel raised a hand to cut him off. "No, they won't."

Lifting his head, Sam stared at the other man, his brow furrowing in confusion. What was that supposed to mean? Had Castiel done something…?

The questions he had must have been written on his face, for the angel shook his head. "They were left unharmed. But I do have the ability to…alter memories to some extent. They will not remember what they saw tonight, nor why they sought you in the first place."

The relief sank in as Sam leaned back against the headboard again. He felt weak enough that he wasn't sure he could have made it outside himself, much less with his brother in tow. Maybe they actually could rest here.

Then something else occurred to him, and he looked up sharply. "Does that mean you can…" He swallowed, thinking of the confession Dean had made to him four days ago as he looked at Dean sleeping as soundly as he had seen him since his return. "You can alter anyone's memories?"

Castiel followed his gaze, and his mouth tightened. "Not to that great an extent, no. Dean's memories are too sharp and too full to be blurred or lightened by anything I can do."

Sam's shoulders slumped. For the hundredth time, he cursed the fact that he had actually thrown away the magical coin. Never mind that there was always a price involved—he'd be willing to pay it if it meant Dean could come out from under the shadow that was always hovering over him.

"Does that mean you can see his memories?" he hesitantly asked.

The angel's lips thinned. "Yes."

Sam bit his lip, knowing it was wrong to ask, but still unable to help himself. "What happened to him?" he asked softly.

"That story is not mine to tell," Castiel replied in admonishment.

"He won't tell me," he said in a low voice, one hand forming into a fist. "He admitted that he remembers everything, but he won't say a word." He lifted his gaze to Castiel's. "Please."

"Why do you want to know?" Castiel asked, his bright blue eyes boring into Sam's.

Sam opened his mouth, then realized he didn't know what to say. "Because I have to," he finally replied.

Castiel's eyebrows went up, but he didn't say anything.

Sam licked his lips. "Look, he did it for me, okay? He gave up his life and God knows what else so that I could be alive. So whatever he's gone through, it's my fault."

"I thought Dean was the one who made the deal," Castiel replied levelly.

"It's not his fault," Sam retorted, memories of Cold Oak rising up hard and fast. "It's mine. If I'd been paying more attention, if I'd been aware of what was behind me, if I hadn't been so…"

"So compassionate?" Castiel inquired, eyebrows lifting.

Sam's brow furrowed. "What do you know about it?" he asked warily.

The corner of the other man's mouth lifted in a sad smile. "I have been watching your brother and you for a long time."

He digested that for a moment, but only a moment, before rage rose within him, filling him with energy he hadn't had a moment ago. Leaning forward, he said heatedly, "You're telling me you were there? You could have stopped everything that happened? You could have stopped Dean from making his deal?"

"Not everything," Castiel replied, briefly looking at Dean before shifting his crystal-blue eyes back to Sam. "There is the matter of your death, for example."

The unwelcome memory of sharp, blinding pain in his back suddenly ripped through him. He gripped the bedspread with both hands, riding it out like an actual wave of pain. As it slowly cleared, something else struck him, and he frowned.

The lightning bolt had hit him in the exact same spot.

He reached around behind him and felt up his spine, tracing the thin line of the scar that had split his life—and his brother's—in two. Funny how that had remained on his skin even though the muscle, bone, and tendons beneath it had healed.

On the other hand, there was no trace of the lightning bolt's path: no healing skin or scarred path where electricity had seared into his body. And he didn't know what to think about that.

Looking up, he saw Castiel patiently watching him. "What do you mean?" he asked warily. "Why can some things be stopped or undone and not others?" He brought both hands to rest in front of him and asked the question that had just popped into his head but felt like it had been there all along: "Why did you save us tonight, Castiel? Why did you save _me_?"

There was silence for a moment. Then the angel broke his gaze again, looking off across the room towards the stained beige wallpaper on the far wall. "Because some things are not written in stone. And some things are not meant for you to know."

"Bullshit." Sam slammed both palms down on the bed, wishing it was a harder surface so that it would make a more satisfying noise. "Then why are you here talking to me?"

"Because I needed to know what you know," Castiel replied, rising to his feet. "And I had to tell you some things as well."

"Obviously not everything," Sam shot back.

"How do your human authorities put it? Some things are 'need-to-know'?" Castiel's fingers curved gracefully in air quotes that Sam was surprised he knew how to make. "I can see what _might_ come to pass, yes, but it would do you no good to see that."

"How do you know?" Sam challenged.

Castiel took in a deep breath, and Sam was struck by how much more human he looked when he seemed weary. His eyes flickered to Dean and back before he spoke, his voice flat. "Because I do not believe it gave your father any help or comfort."

Sam stared blankly. He could almost feel gears in his head turning, trying to process this astounding piece of information. Hadn't he and Dean just been wondering where their father's final command had come from? When he spoke, his voice was as raw as if he had been the one with a noose around his neck. "You…you told my dad something about me? _You're_ the one who told him he might have to kill me?"

The angel bowed his head, his silence the only answer needed.

Sam's hands had formed into fists before he realized it, and he forced his fingers to straighten out again, pressing them against his thighs. "So that whole promise rigmarole I just went through—you already knew about that."

"It makes a difference when it comes from you directly," Castiel quietly replied, lifting his head, his eyes as earnest and honest as ever despite the deception he'd just revealed.

"What did you tell him?" Sam demanded quietly, steel now in his voice.

Castiel shook his head. "I told you, I believe it was a mistake to do so. I have no intention of committing the same error twice."

"Damn it, Cass, I have a right to know!" Sam was shouting now, trying to cover the fact that he was scared out of his mind: both afraid that the angel would leave without telling him what his destiny was, and scared that he _would_ tell him. He was teetering on the edge here of something he'd wanted to know for two long years, and he couldn't bear the thought of it slipping away from him.

The answer came quickly and deliberately: "You don't want to know."

Sam had always scoffed at that phrase, always believed that the truth was worth knowing and that not wanting to know was weakness compared to whatever obtaining knowledge would bring. He'd snapped back at Dean the previous afternoon for saying that same line with regards to his time in Hell.

But the deadly tone with which the angel spoke those words made him believe that maybe this once, he actually _didn't_ want to know.

His widened eyes must have caught Castiel's attention, for the other man gentled his voice as he said, "I told you, some things can be changed. It will do you no good to dwell on a thing if it does not come to pass. In this case, it may actually bring you harm."

"But you told my father," Sam pressed, although the heat was gone from his voice.

Castiel spread his hands apart, palms up. When he spoke, his voice was low and quiet. "I expected he would be around much longer to watch over you."

Sam inhaled sharply. That was yet another revelation, one that he would have to ponder for quite a while to come. What it meant in terms of free will and destiny and power was staggering, and he found himself reassured and frightened all at the same time.

Apparently even the plans of the angels could be sent astray by the choices made by one man.

He dropped his head, suddenly weary. He needed to think, and he needed to talk to Dean, and he needed his head to stop pounding like the inside of a tympani. And none of those were likely to happen any time soon.

"Will you now rest?" Castiel asked.

Sam bit his lip. "You'll stay here?"

"I promise that both of you will be safe."

It wasn't quite an answer to the question, but it was enough. If you couldn't trust an honest-to-God angel who'd already saved your life once tonight to protect you, who could you trust?

So Sam slid down until he was lying flat, turned on his side towards his brother, and tuned into Dean's steady, reassuring breathing. His brain was still whirling, but ever more fuzzily, and it wasn't long before he didn't remember another thought.

The last thing that registered in his consciousness was the sound of wings rustling.

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Thanks in advance for your reviews!


	14. Chapter 14: Bitter Fires

Well, I didn't intend the last chapter to be the longest, but the boys just wouldn't stop talking. Hope no one minds! Thanks once again to DreamBrother for the awesome beta job, and thanks to everyone who has responded. I have been amazed at the outpouring of support and favoriting and reviews that this story has gotten. You've made a newbie to the fandom happy to be here, and motivated me to write more. Catch ya next time!

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The beat of your heart, the slow burnin' away  
Of the bitter fires of the devil's arcade  
--Bruce Springsteen, "Devil's Arcade"

oooooooooooooooo

Daylight crept in and around the cheap motel curtains, washing across Dean's face. His eyes snapped open at the touch of the light, and he looked around the room without moving his head. From the complete silence, he appeared to be alone.

Then he remembered the last thing he saw—the angel leaning over his brother—and his heart started to pound.

"Sam!" Gritting his teeth, he forced himself to rise, calling out his brother's name again with a voice like sandpaper. It reminded him of nothing so much as the weak sound of his voice calling for help in the pine box in Illinois, and his fear deepened at the memory.

"I'm here, Dean."

Sam's voice came from the far corner of the room, and Dean turned his head to see him standing up from the small table in front of the open laptop. He quickly ran his eyes over the younger man, noting the bandages around his wrists, the cuts and scrapes on his face, the gauze pad across his neck, and the black eye.

"You okay?" he rasped, feeling his pulse rate start to return to normal.

Sam nodded as he walked over, stiffness apparent in his movements. "Yeah. How 'bout you?"

Now that he was sure Sam was safe, Dean paused to do a mental inventory. Throat was on fire—to be expected. Ditto with the brutally sore shoulders and arms and the headache. He nodded. "Think so," he whispered.

Sam dropped onto the bed opposite him. "How's your head?"

Dean frowned. "I told you didn't hit my head hard, Sam. It's fine." If he kept his voice really low, it didn't hurt so much to speak, even if it made him sound like he was gargling with gravel.

"I thought maybe when you went down…" Sam trailed off, and Dean remembered keeping his eyes fixed on his brother as he lost consciousness.

"What about you?" Dean asked. For the first time, he noticed that his own wrists were wrapped in white, and he frowned. "How'd you get us back here and patched up, anyway?"

"I had a little help," Sam said, the corner of his mouth quirking up.

Dean tilted his head forward, silently prompting him to go on.

Sam shrugged one shoulder. "Cass says hi."

Dean arched an eyebrow at hearing his nickname for the angel come from his brother's mouth. "Didn't realize you two were on such friendly terms."

A familiar huff emerged from Sam's mouth. "I don't know if 'friendly' is the right word, but yeah, we had a conversation."

_And you're still here_, was on the tip of Dean's tongue, but he held back the obvious observation. "And…?" he asked instead.

"I learned some things." Sam lowered his gaze to his hands, which were clasped between his knees. "Guess we both did last night, huh?"

"What kinds of things?" Dean ignored the invitation to share his feelings and concentrated on what the angel had had to say to his brother.

Sam reached up and scratched the back of his head. Then he took a deep breath and blew it out, apparently deciding to dive right in. "Turns out that this thing I can do with demons? Apparently I can do it with angels, too."

Dean contemplated that for a moment, slotting it in with what he already knew about the freaky things his brother could do and somehow finding it not all that surprising. Then his eyebrows went sky-high as the implications sank in. "Sam, you didn't….?" he asked warily.

Sam stared at him for a moment before his face dissolved into a scowl. "No, I didn't. God, what kind of a stupid question is that?"

He shrugged in response. "Just wondering why our angel buddy isn't here, that's all."

Sam's head turned towards the doorway, and for a moment Dean expected to see Castiel's rumpled figure standing there. But the door was closed, the room empty other than the two of them. "Must have had had other things to do." Sam's gaze dropped back down to the faded carpet. "I think he wanted to get away from here."

The weariness in his brother's voice tugged at something inside of Dean. "Hey, I know he's not a member of the Sam Winchester Fan Club, but he doesn't have it in for you." _Or you wouldn't be sitting here talking to me_, he thought with a measure of thankfulness.

Sam raised his head, his eyes warmer than Dean would have expected. "Yeah, I know," he replied softly.

Dean felt surprise wash over his face. "You telling me there was a little reconciliation going on in here while I was getting my beauty sleep? Sammy, that's so sweet."

The roll of his little brother's eyes was completely expected. What he blurted out was not. "Dean, he said you're safe."

"Come again?" he asked, brow furrowing.

The beginnings of a smile were lurking at the corners of Sam's mouth. "The deal is over. Castiel didn't break the contract when he hauled you out of Hell. You don't have to go back. Ever."

The rush of relief that filled him was swept away just as quickly by the gnawing guilt that had become his closest companion. "'Less I've already earned my own way back," he muttered.

"What?" came Sam's incredulous tone as his face fell.

Dean shook his head, feeling the pull against the torn skin around his neck. "Never mind," he muttered. Then, louder, he said, "Hey, he didn't give you any crap, did he? For dealing with that bitch in that barn? Because if he did, I swear…"

"Dean, he's not a bully that you can pick a fight with after school." For a moment, Sam's eyes were those of a fourteen-year-old kid, grateful for his big brother standing up for him. Then they darkened, turning back into the jaded hazel of a twenty-five-year-old who'd had to deal with more in his life than most people twice his age. "It's okay. I took care of it."

Dean raised an eyebrow, impressed with the confidence with which his brother spoke. Then he looked more closely at the way Sam was blinking. _The little twerp is totally faking it,_ he thought. _Big twerp. Whatever._ He carefully cleared his throat. "So what else did you two talk about?"

Sam shrugged one shoulder and dropped his gaze to the dingy carpet, displaying one of his clearest tells. "Nothing important."

A moment passed. Dean rolled his eyes. "Okay, what is this, you figure 'cause you had to share two, no, three big secrets yesterday, you've got room to keep more now?"

"Give me a break." Sam's voice was suddenly cold, his eyes angry blue-green as he lifted them to Dean. "Like you have any room to talk."

"Hey, I only have one thing I'm not telling you about, and you know what it is." He spread his hands apart, keeping the range of motion small to keep the screaming pain in his shoulders down to a minimum. "Seems like you got all kinds of things going on in your head that I have no frickin' clue about."

"Yeah, well, I guess it sucks to be you," came the muttered response.

Dean stared for a moment at his normally sharing and caring brother. The words _How did we get to be like this?_ were on the tip of his tongue, but that sounded way too much like something out of a Lifetime movie for him to actually say out loud. Instead he said, "It's a hell of a lot more than that, Sam. Sounds like you pulled some really stupid shit while I was gone."

Sam lifted his hands in a frustrated gesture. "How many times do I have to say it? I didn't make any deals, Dean. I didn't do anything to get you out of Hell." His voice cracked slightly on the last word.

"Tom was right about one thing, you know." Dean waited until his brother's wary gaze was fixed on him before going on, "It might not have worked, but it still matters that you tried."

Sam scoffed. "In case you weren't paying attention, I didn't actually _get_ to try. Either no one was listening, or I changed my mind. So let it go, okay?"

"No, Sam, I can't." Dean shifted forward, folding his legs Indian-style under the covers. "'Cause you don't get to make decisions like that. It's one thing to trade your life for someone else's, or even your soul." He shook his head, the dread he had felt while hearing Sam tell his story back in the barn rising in his throat once more. "But you can't play with other people's lives. You can't unleash something that has the power to do a whole lot more than drag you into Hell. Dad and I, we made our choices. We didn't give up anything but ourselves. You were planning on doing a whole lot more than that."

"I had it under control." Sam's voice was low, but his gaze had dropped to the carpet. "I had all the precautions in place and I knew what I was doing."

Dean didn't know whether they were talking about opening the Devils' Gate or Sam leading a demon army, but at this point, it didn't really matter. "You can't say that you knew what you were doing when it comes to demons. You just _can't_. They say things, they tell lies on purpose because it's part of what they do. You can't believe a word they say." His voice trailed off, and for a moment, he saw a red-haired woman strapped to a rack, her wide blue eyes closing with relief as Dean told her it was over for now—then opening again with a scream as he showed her how much of a lie that had been.

He cleared his throat, welcoming the minor pain as a reminder that he was no longer the one holding the knife. "Look, I know it was hard for you without me, but—"

"You have no idea how hard it was." Sam shot to his feet, unable to hide a wince at the movement. "You couldn't even last a freaking week when I died before bargaining away your soul for practically nothing. I saw you die in front of me a hundred different ways thanks to the Trickster, and then I went six _months_ without you." His voice was rising as he went on, "And then I got to lose you all over again after I promised to save you. I _promised_, Dean, I swore I would keep you out of Hell. But I failed." Sam's voice trailed off to a whisper as he sank back onto his bed, dropping his head forward so that his forehead rested in one large hand.

Silence fell in the room. Dean chewed on his lower lip, watching his distraught brother. Talking wasn't on the list of pain-free activities at the moment, but someone obviously needed it. "Sam, if that's what this is about…dude, I didn't think you were actually going to be able to stop the deal from coming due."

Sam's head shot up, his wide, hurt eyes fixed on Dean. "You didn't think I could save you?" he asked in a small voice.

Dean let out a sigh. "You said you promised to save me. I guess I heard it as you promising to try. And God knows you did. Man, you put everything you had into it, and I do _not _want you feeling like you screwed up. There was nothing that could be done, that's all," he ended with a tiny shrug.

_There's nothing that can be done for me, Sam_, he added in his head._ Just accept it._

Sam stared at him for a few seconds. "Don't you get it?" he asked, looking so intensely at Dean that he felt like Sam's eyes were burning right through him. "I failed you so completely and utterly…" He shook his head. "I mean, I know you have this whole big brother complex going on, but I'm responsible for you, too, you know? And there's no bigger way to let you down than what I did."

"Hey, listen to me." Dean leaned forward, mentally cursing at how weak his voice sounded. "It is not your fault that I went to Hell. You got that?"

Sam shrugged one shoulder and fidgeted with the cuff of his shirt. "It's just…sometimes I can't help but wonder. Maybe things would be better if you hadn't made the deal."

"No." Dean barked out the word. "Don't you ever say that. I'm glad that I did it, and don't you forget it."

There was silence for a moment. Sam's eyes shifted back and forth between Dean and the motel room door, and Dean looked over his shoulder for a moment, half expecting to see Castiel there. But they were alone. Finally Sam cleared his throat and said quietly, eyes fixed on the door, "If you'd known what I…what I was going to become, would you still have done it?"

"What the hell are you talking about, 'what you were going to become'?" Dean growled, an uncomfortable feeling stirring in his stomach. "You're not anything but my pain-in-the-ass little brother, and that's the way it's going to stay."

Sam shook his head and said so softly Dean barely heard him, "It's why I never said anything about my blood. What the yellow-eyed demon told me." He visibly swallowed and went on, "I mean, you had just made this stupid deal for me, and here I found out I wasn't even human anymore. There was no way I was going to tell you that."

"Will you quit it with the 'not human' crap? God, you're as bad as the losers from last night," Dean grumbled, wishing this conversation would end already.

"Dean, _angels_ have told me that I'm not human, okay?" Sam's face was anguished. "It's kinda hard to argue with that."

"They said you had demon blood, not that you were a demon. That's not the same thing. Believe me, Sam, I know demons." Dean swallowed hard, forcing back forty years' worth of memories and ten years in particular. "And you're _not_ capable of becoming one."

Sam lifted his head, argumentativeness written all over his face. And then he stopped, looking into Dean's eyes and apparently reading something that the older man didn't even know was there. His Adam's apple moved as he swallowed. "If you say so," Sam almost whispered.

Dean looked back at him for a moment. Then he gave a solemn nod. "I do. And I'm the big brother, so I'm always right."

That got him only a shadow of the grin he was hoping for, but hey, it was something.

Silence had fallen in the motel room, and Dean took advantage of the pause to stretch a little and look around, hoping the smell of coffee he was just now noticing was coming from two cups and not one. He gave Sam a hopeful look, and his little brother returned it with a long-suffering roll of his eyes as he got to his feet. Dean watched him carefully as he made his way to the table, noticing the stiffness in his left shoulder and the way he didn't let his right leg bear his weight for very long. When Sam returned with the coffee, he brought his own, nearly-empty cup as well, and for a moment they sat sipping in companionable silence.

Dean was starting to feel the caffeine hit his bloodstream when Sam set his styrofoam cup on the nightstand between the beds. "Hey, uh, Dean," he said, reaching up and scratching the back of his head again.

The tone of voice was one Dean recognized, and he raised a hand to cut it off. "Oh, no. Injured man here." He pointed to his throat. "I am not in good enough condition for a chick flick moment."

Sam's rueful grin was a mixture of affection and exasperation. "I'm that easy to read, huh?"

"Like a large print edition outlined in highlighter," Dean replied with a lifted eyebrow.

The grin remained for a moment before fading, but the affection remained. "Seriously, man, I'm sorry. I should have told you."

Dean paused, waiting for more. Almost reluctantly, he asked, "Which part?"

That got him a grimace. "About the lightning. I should have known it could get in the way. I blew it in the middle of a hunt, and I'm sorry."

"Well, it's done now, right?" Dean replied. "You're not gonna freak out next time there's a thunderstorm?"

Sam shook his head firmly.

"All right then." He took a gulp of warm coffee and winced as he swallowed it down. Damn, if eating was going to be this painful for the foreseeable future, he was _not_ going to be a happy camper. "Now the rest of it, I'm still pissed about. Plus whatever you're not telling me that Cass told you."

That got him an incredulous look. "That's none of your business, Dean."

"That means a lot less after what happened out on the trail yesterday," he rasped out. "It's my business if it's something that might affect me."

"Oh, that's rich." Sam glared at him. "Meanwhile, I gotta take your word for it that there's nothing you're keeping from me that might cause you to freeze up like I did. No fire or smoke or God knows what that might give you a flashback that I have no way of predicting because you won't tell me a damn thing about what happened to you." His voice rose with practically every word until it was almost echoing off the walls.

"You done?" Dean asked quietly, sipping his coffee and thanking God that Sam had never found out about the lap dog that he'd misinterpreted as a hellhound while under the influence of the ghost virus.

Sam stared back at him. "You've got to be kidding me."

"Nope." He carefully set the cup down and took a deep breath. "I'm gonna say this once, Sammy, and that's it. I can't talk about what happened. Hell, I can't even _think_ about it, okay?" He paused for a moment, but was unable to gauge anything from his brother's blank face. "Okay?"

"Yeah," Sam muttered, dropping his head.

Dean grimaced as he realized the emotional moment he'd wanted to avoid was flying straight at them, and worse yet, he was the one steering them into it. "Look, I don't want you to think I'm sorry I did it. Ever." He waited until Sam's hazel eyes were looking into his to make sure he got it, and then he went on, "But don't ask me for any more. Don't try to take…" He trailed off, unsure of how to put it.

"Don't try to take more from you than I already have," Sam said in a low voice, his eyes starting to glisten.

"That's not what I meant," Dean growled.

"It's not what you were going to say, but it's what you meant." Sam looked back challengingly. "Tell you what, I won't ask any more as long as you tell me something: would you still have made the deal if you'd known what it was going to be like in Hell?"

Pain and redness and screams and terror flashed across his mind for a second, and his eyes slammed shut against the memories. When he opened his eyes and met his brother's gaze, he said too quickly, "Of course I would, Sam."

But the pause had been a fraction of a second too long, and the corner of Sam's mouth quirked up knowingly, sadly. "It's okay," he replied, getting to his feet and grabbing his empty coffee cup off the nightstand.

"Sam, I don't—"

"It's okay," Sam repeated, holding out a hand towards him to stop him from saying more. "I don't blame you one bit. And I won't ask again, I promise."

Silence fell for a moment. Then Dean spoke up again, saying the first thing he could think of to get his mind off of what felt uncomfortably like a betrayal of his brother. "So, uh, maybe we should do what you suggested a few days ago."

"What's that?" Sam asked, slightly wary.

"After we blow this town," Dean began, "we could use a couple of days off. Find a good pool hall, get our wallets happy, maybe get something else happy…" He waggled his eyebrows at Sam.

Predictably, the younger man rolled his eyes at the last comment, but he gave a nod of agreement. "Yeah, but we probably want to get a few miles away from here first."

Suddenly Dean realized why the younger man had been looking at the door so often as the sudden realization that their captors were still out there swept over him. "Damn it, we gotta get moving," he muttered, trying to rise to his feet.

"Hey, take it easy," Sam said, leaning down to wrap a gigantic hand over his shoulder and keep him in place.

"Dude, those guys are still out there, and we're in the same damn motel room they got us from the first time," he retorted, struggling against the pressure of Sam's hand.

Sam was shaking his head. "It's okay," he said, patting Dean's shoulder before releasing it. "Castiel did something to make them forget why they were here."

Dean looked at him sharply. "He can do that?"

"Yeah." Sam bit his lip. "He, uh, can do it if it's something small. Not like…" He gestured at Dean's head and flushed slightly.

"Oh." Dean sat back against the headboard, not sure if he should be pissed at Sam for talking about him behind his back or grateful that at least he'd tried. _Told you nothing can be done for me_, he thought bitterly. Still, he was touched, if not surprised, that Sam had thought to ask.

It was why he hadn't admitted anything in Concrete about his memories of Hell until Sam told him the enchanted coin was melted down. Dean knew that despite his stated desire to get back at Lilith, Sam would have tried to put the coin to use on his older brother if he'd known it could be used to erase even four months' worth of remembered torture, much less the forty years it had actually been.

And that wouldn't have been right. He'd done things down there that he didn't _deserve_ to forget. As hard as it was to wake up every morning with the memories lurking like dark wolves in the corners of his mind, as much as Sam was right to worry that the wrong thing would trigger a flashback at exactly the wrong time, it wouldn't be right to wave a wand and make them go away. He had ten years to account for, and wishing it all away would be way too easy.

"Don't worry about it," he said casually. "He'd probably erase a little too much by accident and then I wouldn't be able to remember that hot blonde down in Dallas."

"Who, Debbie?" Sam asked, deliberate innocence pasted all over his face.

Dean shot him a mock glare, relieved beyond words that he'd taken the bait. "Didn't realize you were familiar with the classics of porn, little brother."

"Hard not to be when you're around," Sam retorted, raising his arms to make a three-point shot with the coffee cup into the garbage can on the far side of the room. He pumped one fist in triumph and then looked at Dean. "So are you gonna lounge around in bed all day or are we gonna get out of here?"

Dean opened his mouth, a stinging retort on his lips, and swallowed it at the twinkle in Sam's eye. He hadn't seen playfulness and teasing on his brother's face nearly enough since he'd been back, and damned if he was going to be the one to wipe it away. "Just for that, you're doing all the packing," he retorted in the gruffest voice he could manage.

"Okay." Sam agreed too readily, but for once Dean wasn't going to call him on it. Instead he focused on standing up and hobbling over to the shower, shutting the door firmly behind him in case any overprotective little brothers got any ideas about checking up on him.

The hot water felt fantastic, and he could literally feel the aches in his shoulders fading away as he stood there. Okay, so he couldn't talk or swallow too easily right now, but nothing needed stitches and none of his injuries were permanent, so all in all, it wasn't a bad outcome. There were obviously some discreet inquiries they'd need to have Bobby make as to how the Three Musketeers had gotten the crazy ideas into their heads that they had had, but they might get out of this relatively unscathed.

Of course, Sam was clearly hiding something big that Castiel had told him, and then there was the can of worms that was Ruby that needed to be opened, and Dean was going to stop that metaphor right now before it got any farther into his brain. Then there was the angel's oh-so-cheerful comment a few weeks ago about not envying the upcoming decisions Dean was going have to make, plus the ever-looming threat of the end of the world. Not to mention the ticking time bomb in his own head of post-traumatic stress that he could guarantee was off the charts of any earthly psychiatrist.

Then he heard Sam yelling at him to hurry up, and a smile crept over his face. "Keep your pants on, Princess," he shouted back, not minding the scrape of his voice over his abused throat. It meant he was alive and here and with his living, breathing brother in the next room, and if it took nearly being hung to death to remind him of how valuable that was, well, it was worth it.

And he would hold on to that thought for as long as he could.

oooooooooooooooo


End file.
